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 | |
I would faine serve John Lylys Career at Court | 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 |
Other editions - View all
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 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 17 - Let your first action be the lifting up of your mind to Almighty God by hearty prayer; and feelingly digest the words...