Flower of Friendship : A Renaissance Dialogue Contesting Marriage

Edmund Tilney dedicated to Queen Elizabeth in 1568 a spirited dialogue concerning appropriate behavior in marriage. Extraordinarily popular for a generation following its first publication, it is available here for the first time in a critical edition that includes a comprehensive essay by Valerie Wayne.

"As Wayne demonstrates in her introduction, The Flower of Friendship is a wonderfully witty dialogue treating a key issue in Tudor culture. Clearly, it is an important and revealing index to the ideology of Tudor England, a touchstone in discussions of gender relationships as they are fictionalized in Renaissance literature."

"The book is a delight to read, and the combination of critical edition and general introduction to the subject is an especially attractive one. Wayne offers a much-needed introduction to sixteenth-century ideologies of marriage, one that is meticulous, rigorous, and persuasive. She is the first to layout a carefully theorized reading of marriage treatises as a specific genre."