Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature

This book examines how English writers from the Elizabethan period to the Restoration transformed and contested the ancient ideal of the virtuous mean. As early modern authors learned at grammar school and university, Aristotle and other classical thinkers praised "golden means" balanced between extremes: courage, for example, as opposed to cowardice or recklessness. By uncovering the enormous variety of English responses to this ethical doctrine, Joshua Scodel revises our understanding of the vital interaction between classical thought and early modern literary culture.


Scodel argues that English authors used the ancient schema of means and extremes in innovative and contentious ways hitherto ignored by scholars. Through close readings of diverse writers and genres, he shows that conflicting representations of means and extremes figured prominently in the emergence of a self-consciously modern English culture. Donne, for example, reshaped the classical mean to promote individual freedom, while Bacon held extremism necessary for human empowerment. Imagining a modern rival to ancient Rome, georgics from Spenser to Cowley exhorted England to embody the mean or lauded extreme paths to national greatness. Drinking poetry from Jonson to Rochester expressed opposing visions of convivial moderation and drunken excess, while erotic writing from Sidney to Dryden and Behn pitted extreme passion against the traditional mean of conjugal moderation. Challenging his predecessors in various genres, Milton celebrated golden means of restrained pleasure and self-respect. Throughout this groundbreaking study, Scodel suggests how early modern treatments of means and extremes resonate in present-day cultural debates.

Info autore

Joshua Scodel

Riassunto

Examines how English writers from the Elizabethan period to the Restoration transformed and contested the ancient ideal of the virtuous mean. This book argues that English authors used the ancient schema of means and extremes in innovative and contentious ways hitherto ignored by scholars.

Testo aggiuntivo

"An excellent book, ambitious in scope and masterful in its management of scholarly resources and interpretive techniques."---Jon A. Quitslund, Renaissance Quarterly

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Joshua Scodel
• Con la collaborazione di: Joshua Bromwich (Editore), James Chandler (Editore), Lionel Gossman (Editore)
• Editore: Princeton University Press
• Lingue: Inglese
• Contenuto: Libro
• Forma del prodotto: Copertina rigida
• Data pubblicazione: 24.03.2002
• Categoria: Scienze umane, arte, musica > Scienze linguistiche e letterarie > Letteratura / linguistica inglese; Narrativa > Poesia lirica, drammatica
• EAN: 9780691090283
• ISBN: 978-0-691-09028-3
• Numero di pagine: 376
• Serie: Literature in History (Hardcov; Literature in History
• Categorie: Satire, Literature, English, Poetry, William Shakespeare, PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Medieval, PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical, LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance, Postmodernism, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / General, King Lear, Juvenal, Counter-Reformation, Oliver Cromwell, John Donne, liberalism, 17th century, c 1600 to c 1699, Prudentius, Extremism, Literary theory, imperialism, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, British literature, 16th century, c 1500 to c 1599, c 1500 to c 1600, C 1600 To C 1700, Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500, Western philosophy: Medieval & Renaissance, c 500 to c 1600, Narcissism, Medieval Western philosophy, Persius, Literary studies: c 1400 to c 1600, Theodicy, Aristotle, Lucretius, Utilitarianism, English Baroque, scholasticism, puritans, epigram, early modern literature, jouissance, Horace, early modern Britain, Edmund Spenser, Georgics, English Revolution, Petrarch, English poetry, Early Modern English, G. (novel), Superiority (short story), Laudianism, libertine, Pelagianism, Areopagitica, Sonnet sequence, Shakespeare's sonnets, Sexual Desire (book), Effeminacy, Patriarchalism, Edmund Gosse, Petrarchan sonnet, Astraea Redux, Absalom and Achitophel, Colloquies, English Renaissance, Robert Greene (dramatist), Histriomastix, Modern Moral Philosophy, Critical Essays (Orwell), Literature and Revolution, John Suckling (poet), Milton's divorce tracts, Cavalier poet, John Harington (writer), Poetaster, Momus, The English Gentleman, Henry Wotton, Marprelate Controversy, Golden mean (philosophy), Phrygius, Restoration literature