Sons and Authors in Elizabethan EnglandThis study examines the lives and works of three Elizabethan authors - John Lyly, Philip Sidney, and Robert [Illegible] - in order to trace an important transition in authorship at an historical moment in England. In sixteenth-century England poetry (in Sidney's inclusive sense of all fiction) was juvenilin - a youthful exercise that one gave up as one [Illegible] one's place in the world as a responsible adult. There was consequently something of a stigma to writing fiction as an adult, and the notion of a career as a writer of poetry or fiction was virtually inconceivable, It is the purpose of this study to suggest how such a career finally became conceivable at this historical moment by examining the ways each of these authors managed to negotiate a relationship to writing that enabled them to mature into adulthood, not only without relinquishing their writing, but actually by means of the self-[Illegible] and social interaction enabled by that writing. |
Contents
| 28 | |
| 47 | |
I call it praise to suffer tyrannie Sidneys Anti Courtly Works | 65 |
4 To serve your prince by an honest dissimulation The New Arcadia as a Defense of Poetry | 89 |
He who cannot dissemble cannot live Robert Greenes Romances | 112 |
I may terme my selfe a writer ConyCatchers and Greenes Defense of Poetry | 127 |
Through the Looking Glass | 149 |
Notes | 157 |
Bibliography | 187 |
Index | 195 |
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Common terms and phrases
advice Amphialus appeal argue Astrophil and Stella authorial career authority authorship believe Burghley Cambridge Campaspe celebration claim conies conventional cony-catching pamphlets court courtier courtly cultural Defence Diogenes early Elizabeth Elizabethan England Elizabethan Prodigals emphasis added Endimion epistle Euarchus Euphues euphuistic father father-son female audience fiction final flattering Gallathea gender gentlemen readers gesture Greene's romances haue Helgerson humanist identifies instance John Lyly Lady literature London loue Lyly's Mamillia masculine mirror Musidorus Musidorus's narrative offer Old Arcadia Oxford Pamela patron patronage Petrarchan Pharicles Philautus Philomela poet poetry political position praise princes prodigal son Prose pursue Pyrocles queen relationship Repentance represents revealing revised Robert Greene rogue literature Sapho Sapho and Phao says seems servants Sidney's Sir Philip Sidney social Sonnet Sonnet 35 Sonnet 41 story strategy suggests Therion Thomas Nashe thou tion trial scene truth University Press woman women readers writing wrote young
Popular passages
Page 65 - I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too...
Page 178 - Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath : for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I -will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore If thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink : for in so doing thou sha.lt heap coals of fire on his head.
Page 90 - Which delivering forth also is not wholly imaginative, as we are wont to say by them that build castles in the air: but so far substantially it worketh, not only to make a Cyrus, which had been but a particular excellency, as Nature might have done, but to bestow a Cyrus upon the world, to make many Cyruses, if they will learn aright why and how that maker made him.
Page 28 - Thirteen years your Highness' servant, but yet nothing. Twenty friends that though they say they will be sure I find them sure to be slow. A thousand hopes but all nothing ; a hundred promises but yet nothing. Thus casting up the inventory of my friends, hopes, promises, and times, the summa totaUs amounteth to just nothing.
Page 86 - Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; Others, because of both sides I do take My blood from them who did excel in this, Think nature me a man of arms did make.
Page 152 - If the desire of the mother is the phallus, the child wishes to be the phallus in order to satisfy that desire. Thus the division immanent in desire is already felt to be experienced in the desire of the Other, in that it is already opposed to the fact that the subject is content to present to the Other what in reality he may have that corresponds to this phallus, for what he has is worth no more than...
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Page 84 - I think the very earth lamenteth it, and therefore decketh our soil with fewer laurels than it was accustomed; for heretofore, poets have in England also flourished; and which is to be noted, even in those times, when the trumpet of Mars did sound loudest.
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Page 86 - Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance Guided so well that I obtain'd the prize, Both by the judgement of the English eyes And of some sent from that sweet enemy France...