Poetry and Paternity in Renaissance England: Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne and Jonson.

MacFAUL, TOM.

ISBN 10: 0521191106 / ISBN 13: 9780521191104

Published by Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,, 2010

About this Item

ix, 275 pp. [ISBN: 978-0521191104] Hardbound. PUBLISHER S DAMAGE STAMP on title-page. In all other respects a fine bright copy in like dustwrapper.

Seller Inventory # 29625

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Poetry and Paternity in Renaissance England: Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne and Jonson.
• Publisher: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521191106
• ISBN 13: 9780521191104
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • English Literature: Renaissance

About this title

Synopsis

Becoming a father was the main way that an individual in the English Renaissance could be treated as a full member of the community. Yet patriarchal identity was by no means as secure as is often assumed: when poets invoke the idea of paternity in love poetry and other forms, they are therefore invoking all the anxieties that a culture with contradictory notions of sexuality imposed. This study takes these anxieties seriously, arguing that writers such as Sidney and Spenser deployed images of childbirth to harmonize public and private spheres, to develop a full sense of selfhood in their verse, and even to come to new accommodations between the sexes. Shakespeare, Donne and Jonson, in turn, saw the appeal of the older poets' aims, but resisted their more radical implications. The result is a fiercely personal yet publicly-committed poetry that wouldn't be seen again until the time of the Romantics.

Book Description

The Renaissance was a high-point of English love poetry. This book considers the various anxieties about sex and fatherhood that informed and shaped the major poems of the time, providing social context for the works of such important and popular writers as Shakespeare, Donne and Spenser.