About the Book

Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry combines close readings of individual poems with a critical consideration of the historical context in which they were written. Informative and original, this book has been carefully designed to enable readers to understand, enjoy, and be inspired by sixteenth-century poetry.

• Close reading of a wide variety of sixteenth-century poems, canonical and non-canonical, by men and by women, from print and manuscript culture, across the major literary modes and genres
• Poems read within their historical context, with reference to five major cultural revolutions: Renaissance humanism, the Reformation, the modern nation-state, companionate marriage, and the scientific revolution
• Offers in-depth discussion of Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, Isabella Whitney, Gascoigne, Philip Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Mary Sidney Herbert, Donne, and Shakespeare
• Presents a separate study of all five of Shakespeare’s major poems - Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, 'The Phoenix and Turtle,' the Sonnets, and A Lover's Complaint- in the context of his dramatic career
• Discusses major works of literary criticism by Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Philip Sidney, George Puttenham, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Seamus Heaney, Adrienne Rich, and Helen Vendler

Contents:

Part I 1500–1558. Reading Early Tudor Poetry: Henrician, Edwardian, Marian 19

1 Voice 21
The Poetic Style of Character: Plain and Eloquent Speaking

2 Perception 43
The Crisis of the Reformation, or, What the Poet Sees: Self, Beloved, God

3 World 66
The Poet’s Ecology of Place: Sky, Sea, Soil

4 Form 90
The Idea of a Poem: Elegy, Pastoral, Sonnet, Satire, Epic

5 Career 115
The Role of the Poet in Society: Skelton, Wyatt, and Surrey

Part II 1558–1600. Reading Elizabethan Poetry 139

6 Voice 141
The Poetic Style of Character: From Plain Eloquence to the Metaphysical Sublime

7 Perception 163
What the Poet Sees, and the Advent of Modern Personage: Desire, Idolatry, Transport, Partnership

8 World 185
The Poet’s Ecology of Place: Cosmos, Colony, Country

9 Form 208
Fictions of Poetic Kind: Pastoral, Sonnet, Epic, Minor Epic, Hymn

10 Career 231
The Role of the Poet in Society: Whitney, Spenser, and Marlowe

Part III A Special Case 255

11 Shakespeare: Voice, Perception, World, Form, Career 257