Bunyan and Religious Allegory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Davies
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Narrative Methods ◽  
Pilgrim's Progress ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chivalric Romance

This chapter re-examines John Bunyan's religious allegories, and in particular The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), as works that complicate what might be thought of as novelistic habits of reading and writing. It seeks to approach them not simply as precursors to the novel but as radically different kinds of fiction. One might wish to treat Bunyan's allegories as ‘entertainment machines’ similar to other kinds of early modern literature, such as chivalric romance or the rogue biography, but they resist and arguably seek to reform ‘the fiction reading impulse’. To this degree, Bunyan's major allegorical works are sometimes like novels and at the same time nothing like them. Should Bunyan still hold a place in the history of the novel, it could be despite rather than because of the narrative methods he adopts.

Chivalric Romance and Novella Collections

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Moore
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chivalric Romance

This chapter argues that the sixteenth-century novella collection and chivalric romance have much in common. However, their length, status as translations, and multiple authorships have rendered their comparison difficult and have limited their role in studies of pre-novelistic fiction until relatively recently. The chapter characterizes their relationship as ‘rhetorical’, because consideration of the two genres has long been dictated by their staged opposition in the traditional, dualistic narrative of the novel's origin. This narrative imagines a struggle between the past-ness and absurdities of romance and the present-ness and realism of the novel as anticipated in the early modern novella and the closely related picaresque tale. Hence, they possess an interlocking yet uncomfortable — even antagonistic — rhetorical relationship in the literary history of the novel in English.

scholarly journals Zentrifugen des Wissens – Zur Enzyklopädik des Barockromans

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas B. Kilcher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
Centrifugal Dispersion

AbstractEarly modern literature has high epistemological claims. In particular, the novel as the most innovative genre of the 16th and 17th centuries was expected to negotiate and transmit knowledge about the world in an extensive way. This epistemological optimism must be understood against the background of contemporary encyclopaedic models, which offered new possibilities of reaching out for universal and total knowledge. Two variants of encyclopaedic writing are most efficient for the novel: the logic of Lullism and the miscellaneous knowledge production of Polyhistorism. Both techniques were used in baroque novels of the 17th century: Polyhistorism produced a centrifugal dispersion of knowledge throughout the texts, whereas Lullism aimed at recollecting and ordering it. This interplay is evidently present in Daniel Casper von Lohenstein’s highly digressive 3,000 page novel „Arminius“ (1689/90), with its paratextual framework of prefaces, annotations, and indices. Moreover, the reception of „Arminius“ in 18th and 19th centuries is pertinent for the subsequent critique of encyclopaedic knowledge.

scholarly journals Parallel Narratives and the Question of Novelness in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Reading of its Genre

2016 ◽  
Vol 216 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Instr. Amer Rasool Mahdi / Ph.D.
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Pilgrim's Progress ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Human Condition

The present study attempts to probe into a genre reading of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim Progress as this is deemed as one of the founding texts in English letters. It thus tries to have Bunyan's work re-contextualised within the historical and formal debate of the rise of the novel and the very idea of Novelness. Within the framework and practice of novelness, it is proposed here that formal (generic) self-consciousness is pre-structured within the allegorical renditions of the human condition; these renditions are more likely to be seen as gearing toward being part of the pre- or parallel-history of the novel vis-à-vis the debatable norms of formal realism.

scholarly journals Dworstwo obyczajów Sebastiana Fabiana Klonowica. Przekład Civilitas morum Erazma z Rotterdamu w spuściźnie poety oraz wydawnicze losy książeczki w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej

Terminus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2 (59)) ◽  
pp. 157-216
Author(s):  
Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Publishing History ◽  
Polish Text ◽  
History Of ◽  
Library Collections

Sebastian Fabian Klonowic’s Translation of Civilitas morum by Erasmus of Rotterdam: Its Place in the Poet’s Legacy and Its Publishing History in Poland-Lithuania The article focuses on the Polish rendition of De civilitate morum puerilium – that is, a translation from Reinhard Lorich’s (Hadamarius’) catechismal version of Erasmus’ of Rotterdam treatise. The main goals of the text are: first, to understand the presence of the text (the Polish title: Dworstwo obyczajów) among works of such a talented author as Sebastian Fabian Klonowic; second, to reconstruct the publishing history of the Polish De civilitate; third to argue that forgotten bestsellers, such as Dworstwo, can help to better understand both early modern literature and book market in the first centuries of printing. The article summarises current knowledge about Sebastian Fabian Klonowic (ca. 1545–1602), a prolific poet, but also an author of textbooks and handbooks used to teach Latin and morals, as De civilitate was used as well. It analyses Klonowic’s translation practices and discusses his enthusiasm for Erasmus’ output. It also suggests that the Polish text was written with school usage in mind, probably for students of the newly opened academy established by Polish Brethrens in Raków. Next, the text moves on to describe the publishing history of De civilitate – Erasmus’ manual, its adaptations and translations. The author concentrates on the Polish translation, but the scarce evidence available for this title and its editions in the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania is interpreted in the wider context of the Latin and vernacular editions of De civilitate printed in other European lands. The survey combines information offered by the unique copies preserved in the library collections and the evidence found in archival sources to reconstruct the reasons for the success of the handbook, and to explain why the majority of copies multiplying the text once enormously popular with printers and readers alike were bound to perish. Edition of Dworstwo obyczajów presents the Polish text of Klonowic. It is based on a printed unique copy of about 1603 (held at Ossolineum Library in Wrocław).

Introduction: remapping early modern literature

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Augustine
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Milton ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
John Dryden ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
High Definition ◽  
Andrew Marvell ◽  
History Of ◽  
Century Literature

The argument of this book follows two main themes: the first has to do with periodicity; the second with politics, especially as a framework within which to view seventeenth-century literature. This chapter maps the disciplinary paradigms which have long produced a view of the seventeenth century saturated by high-definition contrasts: between the earlier and later Stuart periods, but also between factions and ideologies. It then asks what it would look like to write the history of seventeenth-century literature anew, to tell a story about imaginative and polemical writing in this age that remained open to accident and unevenness, to contradiction and uncertainty. Giving illustrative consideration to John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton, the chapter begins to suggest some new ways of conceiving how these writers might relate to one other and to the politics and aesthetics of a long seventeenth century.

Fiction and the Origins of Print

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Trade

This chapter is concerned with the far-reaching effects of printing, especially where these resonate with developments associated with the history of the novel. Broader reading communities and the new commerce in books are described in terms of the long and complex processes of change that made them possible. The chapter also attends to those aspects of print culture that were largely unprecedented: changes to the institution of authorship and to the accessibility of texts. Finally, the chapter has a recurring interest in the importance of the pan-European trade in medieval books of Latin. The dominant centres of that trade had always been European; the printers at Venice and Antwerp who made so many books for English readers in the early modern period did as scribes and stationers of Paris and Bologna had done before them.

Montaigne and Shakespeare

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Hamlin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

This article examines the history of critical efforts to trace the nature and extent of Shakespeare’s reliance upon Montaigne. Such efforts began in the late eighteenth century with the English scholar Edward Capell, and they have continued quite vigorously up to the present. In addition, the article raises a number of key cognate questions: What constitutes evidence in an investigation of this sort? When does verbal reliance amount to intellectual dependence? What do we stand to gain if we cease to look for relations of influence and focus instead on synchronic affinities between Montaigne and Shakespeare? Does Shakespeare exhibit resistance to Montaignian thought? And why do the potential links between these extraordinarily independent writers continue to fascinate scholars of early modern literature?

Melancholy, Passionate Love, and the Coita d'Amor

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 640-646
Author(s):  
Josiah Blackmore
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Passionate Love ◽  
Marsilio Ficino ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Constructions

From (Pseudo-)Aristotle's reflections on wine, poetry, and heroes in problems, book 30, to modern psychoanalytic theory and depression, melancholy has claimed the attention of artists and thinkers throughout the history of Western culture. According to Jennifer Radden's historical analysis, melancholy was “a central cultural idea, focusing, explaining, and organizing the way people saw the world and one another and framing social, medical, and epistemological norms” (vii). It takes a number of forms: for ancient Greek physicians it was a somatic malady, an overwrought contemplativeness and moroseness rooted in the body's humors; for Aristotle it was this, too, but was also a fount of artistic inspiration; for the Italian humanist Marsilio Ficino it was the source of poetic and prophetic powers, a requisite for heightened intellect. Melancholy was, in short, a principle of relation between the interior and exterior realms and as such possessed a weighty hermeneutic charge as a lens through which to experience and read the world. In recent years, scholars in literary and cultural studies have begun to explore the perspectives that melancholy offers for understanding such broad topics as the formation of literary subjectivities and cultural constructions of gender. The persistent presence of melancholy in medieval and early modern literature, following Radden's observation, advocates for its many possibilities as an interpretive tool to shape diverse literary positionalities and socioepistemological modes of being.

Albrecht Classen, Prostitution in Medieval and Early Modern Literature: The Dark Side of Sex and Love in the Premodern Era. Studies in Medieval Literature. Lanham, USA: Lexington Books, 2019, 237 p.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-269
Author(s):  
Charlotte A. Stanford
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Related Topic ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
History Of

As this book notes wryly, sex sells well, and the related topic of prostitution has also had its related impact in scholarly literature, even of the premodern era. However, the author also observes a “curious lacuna”—how has prostitution been represented in literary texts? By whom, for what reasons, and for what purposes have these narratives been employed? And what can they tell us about the history of mentalités? Classen’s study on prostitution in literature tackles all these questions and others.

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