Self-portraits and Self-presentation in the Work of George Gascoigne
Austen, Gillian
Early Modern Literary Studies 14.1/Special Issue 18
Abstract
George Gascoigne, the most inventive and influential poet of his generation, has always resisted easy classification. He wrote in many genres but rarely wrote in the same style twice: a successful and witty poet who influenced writers including Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare, his modern reputation has failed to recognise his significance. Gascoigne’s many innovations have contributed to the difficulty in situating his work in the canon. Known as an experimenter, he is mostly remembered today for just a small number of his works: A Discourse of the Adventures of Master FJ (one of the earliest prose fictions in English); the Supposes (one of the earliest translations of Ariosto and a source for the Taming of the Shrew); “Gascoignes wodmanship” (perhaps the best of the early Elizabethan short poems, and frequently anthologised); and “Certayne Notes of Instruction”, the first essay on English versification. Moralist, satirist, dramatist and sonneteer, he was also a courtly poet and deviser of courtly entertainments. One aspect of his work which is especially unusual is his use of illustrations, all by his own hand. This paper attempts to explain the significance of those images and engage with the purpose they served.
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- Introduction: ‘Thus Much I Adventure to Deliver to You’: the Fortunes of George Gascoigne
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- Reflections: Spenser, Elizabeth I, and Mirror Literature
- Googe Is Scrooge: Barnaby Googe and Poetic Asceticism
- “Constable’s Spirituall Sonnettes and the Three Spiritual Ways”