Lyric Poetry

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Clarke ◽  
Simon Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
John Donne ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
Aemilia Lanyer ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Religious Lyric

Legitimized by the poetry of the Bible, devotional lyric verse—crossing denominational lines, often combining Reformation spirituality with Renaissance rhetoric—flourished in early modern England. Poets like Mary and Philip Sidney and George Herbert modelled their work on the Book of Psalms, at times imitating the prosodic simplicity of the Sternhold and Hopkins metrical psalms, elsewhere adapting the sophisticated stanzaic variety of the Marot/Beze Psalter. Women like Aemilia Lanyer and Anne Southwell used the Song of Songs to express their devotion to Christ. The ‘mystical marriage’ was often used by women such as Barbara Mackay, who produced a version of the Song of Songs in manuscript, and Elizabeth Melville, who parodied Petrarchan poetry; and it was employed in shocking fashion by John Donne. The religious lyric exists on the borderline of public and private: in conclusion, we present such lyrics as social and occasional, and examine their relationship with music.

Doubtful Readers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin A. McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
English Literature ◽  
John Donne ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Aemilia Lanyer ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Early Modern Poetry ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
Over Time

Doubtful Readers: Print, Poetry, and the Reading Public in Early Modern England focuses on early modern publishers’ efforts to identify and accommodate new readers of verse that had previously been restricted to particular social networks in manuscript. Focusing on the period between the maturing of the market for printed English literature in the 1590s and the emergence of the professional poet following the Restoration, this study shows that poetry was shaped by—and itself shaped—strong print publication traditions. By reading printed editions of poems by William Shakespeare, Aemilia Lanyer, John Donne, and others, this book shows how publishers negotiated genre, gender, social access, reputation, literary knowledge, and the value of English literature itself. It uses literary, historical, bibliographical, and quantitative evidence to show how publishers’ strategies changed over time. Ultimately, Doubtful Readers argues that although—or perhaps because—publishers’ interpretive and editorial efforts are often elided in studies of early modern poetry, their interventions have had an enduring impact on our canons, texts, and literary histories.

Biblical Readings and Literary Writings in Early Modern England, 1558-1625

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Bible Reading ◽  
Selection Of

This book provides an account of the how the Bible was read and applied in early modern England, and maps the connection between these readings and various forms of writing. The Bible had a profound impact on early modern culture, and Bible-reading shaped the period’s drama, poetry, and life writings, as well as sermons and biblical commentaries. This book argues that literary writings bear the hallmarks of the period’s dominant exegetical practices, and do interpretative work. Tracing the impact of biblical reading across a range of genres and writers, the discussion demonstrates that literary reimaginings of, and allusions to, the Bible were common, varied, and ideologically evocative. The book explores how a series of popularly interpreted biblical narratives were recapitulated in the work of a diverse selection of writers, some of whom remain relatively unknown. In early modern England, the figures of Solomon, Job, and Christ’s mother, Mary, and the books of Song of Songs and Revelation, are enmeshed in different ways with contemporary concerns, and their usage illustrates how the Bible’s narratives could be turned to a fascinating array of debates. Showing the multifarious contexts in which biblical narratives were deployed, this book argues that Protestant interpretative practices both contribute to, and problematize, literary constructions of a range of theological, political, and social debates.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

“The Body of This Death”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith H. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Physical Constitution

In Romans 7:24, Paul utters a cry that has echoed down the centuries: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Paul’s moving outcry attracted the sustained attention of poets in early modern England, among them Spenser, Donne, and Milton, not only because of Paul’s anguish but also because of his unusual phrasing and figuration. The Bible carefully specifies “this death,” which suggests that the death at issue is spiritual and that it results from sin, not simply from the physical constitution of humankind. Yet physical death is implicit in the Adamic sin that human beings inherit and is thus embedded in their fallen nature. Donne’s sermons, Spenser’s Maleger, and Milton’s figures of Sin and Death explore the inextricability of spirit and flesh in the body that is this death.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Erin A. McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Multiple Agents ◽  
Social Form ◽  
Print Publication ◽  
Book Publication

This chapter introduces Doubtful Readers: Print, Poetry, and the Reading Public in Early Modern England. Early modern lyric poetry was a social form, but print publication made poems available to anyone who either had the means to a buy a book or knew someone who did, radically expanding the early modern reading public. The study focuses on the period between the maturing of the market for printed English literature in the 1590s and the emergence of the professional poet following the Restoration to acknowledge changes in both the economics and aesthetics of poetry book publication. It argues that publication in its broadest sense is a form of mediation between multiple agents and material forms. Because print did not change poetry in a single way, this book presents a series of case studies. This chapter concludes with a brief overview of each.

Trade, sociability and governance in an English incorporated borough: ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ worlds in Leicester, c. 1570–1640

Urban History ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 324-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
YOH KAWANA
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Civic Society ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
Simultaneous Existence ◽  
Informal Groups

This study highlights the simultaneous existence of ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ forces in an incorporated borough and their relevance to civic society and governance in a spatial context. Loosely organized networks of men and women of different ages and status were evidenced in credit arrangements, small-scale dealings and sociability in markets, streets and residential houses. These public and private spaces were also subjected to a civic government which attempted to integrate uncontrolled activities into the society of freemen. It is argued that the actions and decisions taken by informal groups and associations were constitutive of the progress of civic society in early modern England.

The Selfe Undone: Individualism and Relationality in John Donne and Aemilia Lanyer

2006 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-486
Author(s):  
Constance Furey
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
John Donne ◽  
Aemilia Lanyer ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Way

There is something right about the hoary old claim that Protestantism spawned individualism. It has been challengedfrom all sides: by those who argue the reverse, by historians of religion who point out that introspective piety was not unique to the early modern period, and by scholars who demonstrate that early Protestants were deeply invested in ecclesiology and communal rituals. Yet this claim—even though clunky and inadequate—remains important, not least because it highlights an enduring link between the way we interpret early Protestant texts and the way we understand individualism today. Consider John Donne's famous denial of isolation, written nearly four hundred years ago: “No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe.” This statement compels us because it refutes what often feels irrefutable: that each person is, essentially, a solitary being, and that, while this existential state may be ameliorated, it is an unavoidable fact of life.

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