Follow Us!
-
-
-
Recent Posts
-
Pages
Poetry Archive
-
“Tell me a story, dear, that is not true”: Love, Historicity, and Transience in A. Mary F. Robinson’s An Italian Garden
Posted on March 8, 2013 | No CommentsThrough a poetic voice compelled to recognize that individual desire is often not reciprocated and that love entails great risk that is itself ennobling, Robinson explores the nature of love that is selfless in that one gives oneself to another, yet selfish in that one comes to need a totality of love not possible in a finite context. Paradoxically, then, love evokes both pleasure and pain. -
Victorian Values
Posted on October 6, 2012 | No Comments‘ “Victorian” is an academic epithet with which I feel profoundly uneasy for a number of reasons’, Kate Flint remarked in 2005, arguing that it has led to an unwholesome ‘period fetishism’, together with a limited view of transnational cultures, and an unreflective inclination to pack too many disparate intellectual and social movements into one simple grouping. -
Legacies of the Victorian Age: The Nation’s Favo(u)rite Poems
Posted on October 6, 2012 | No CommentsOver the next couple of pages I will briefly indicate four areas or modes of research which in my opinion are offering, and will continue to offer, rich and worthwhile opportunities for scholars who work in my area of the larger field, Victorian literary studies – ‘literary’ in this essay encompassing anything to do with writing. -
After marriage: The literature and culture of divorce in England, 1515-1650
Posted on September 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe following pages will argue that in the latter sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the idea of divorce, of marriage's breakdown and dissolution, was as important a concept as that of the marital union itself. -
‘Queen Lilies’? The Interpenetration of Scientific, Religious and Gender Discourses in Victorian Representations of Plants
Posted on September 3, 2012 | No CommentsTo establish the continuity of the ideas involved, the first half of this article outlines modes of thinking that Victorian women inherited from Linnean botany, and from Romantic responses to it, across a broad range of social practices: in systematics, field study, flower painting and illustration, and popular botanical writing. -
Anne Askew and Margaret Fell: Religious Women in Prison And Technologies of the Self
Posted on August 26, 2012 | No CommentsBoth Anne Askew (1521-1546) and Margaret Fell (1614-1702) were imprisoned and wrote significant writings in jail. In prison Askew wrote The First Examination (1546) and The Latter Examination (1547); Fell wrote Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures (1666). The two Protestants’ imprisonment indicates not only their struggle for freedom of their Protestant belief but also the government’s arbitrary exercise of institutional power over non-conforming women. -
Melancholy and the Idle Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe thesis considers Johnson‘s preoccupation with idleness as a symptom of his melancholy, a notion that has received little critical attention. Shenstone‘s experience is used to illustrate the depressing effect that a retired lifestyle could have on the individual. -
Political Verse in Late Georgian Britain: Poems Referring to William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806)
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsThough Pitt was remarkable for the length of his tenure of office and for his youth when first appointed – he became Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four and only Sir Robert Walpole held office for a longer period – it is not our intention to suggest that he was in any way a unique phenomenon in the history of political versifying. -
Emasculated subjects and subjugated wives: discourses of domination in John Banks’s Vertue Betray’d (1682)
Posted on July 22, 2012 | No CommentsBetween 1681 and 1704, John Banks prepared for the stage four tragedies dealing with British history; three of them were centered on the meteoric rise and fall of doomed queens: Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots and Lady Jane Gray. -
John Jarret and Roaring Dick of Dover: Popular Attitudes toward Drinking in Seventeenth-Century England
Posted on July 19, 2012 | No CommentsThis essay argues that a certain type of source, the seventeenth-century broadside ballad, may provide some insight into the attitudes held toward drinking by those at the lower end of the social scale. -
An arbor of one’s own? Aemilia Lanyer and the early modern garden
Posted on June 13, 2012 | No CommentsGardens, women, and poetry had long been associated in sixteenth-cen- tury verse written by men, typically as sources of analogous pleasures. Num- erous lyric mistresses walk or sit among cultured flowers that mirror their charms, enticing viewers’ senses to more or less unsettling effect. -
“Only your picture in my mind”: the image, the heart, and the mirror in some seventeenth-century poems
Posted on June 13, 2012 | No CommentsWhen Marvell crisply invites Clora to “Come view my soul” in “The Gallery” and assures her that all she will find there is images of herself, he is com- menting on a long tradition of looking-glass poems in which a woman’s image is engraved on the lover’s heart. Such poems employ a rhetoric of persuasion to lure the woman away from her mirror. In the mid seventeenth-century, these poems, with their debts to Continental writers, are found predominantly (and consistently) in the works of Royalist poets. -
The Cultural and Ideological Significance of Representations of Boudica During the Reigns of Elizabeth I and James I
Posted on June 3, 2012 | No CommentsFascinated by the British myth of Boudica I began my research into her life and times with the ambition of writing a story. Curious to know what others before me had produced in this field I started to look at representations of Boudica by other historical novelists. I also wanted to understand how the historical Boudica of 60 AD had been transfigured over the years into the icon we have of her today. -
Buttressing a Monarchy: Literary Representations of William III and the Glorious Revolution
Posted on March 27, 2012 | No CommentsThe 1690s have been unfairly criticized as one of the dullest periods in English literature.i While the period lacks the euphoria of the years immediately following the Restoration, the literature in the years following William III’s ascension is anything but dull. As writers wrestled with the monumental changes to the English government brought about by the Glorious Revolution, they created a body of literature that significantly engages political issues and vibrantly expresses the varied conceptions of government circulating at the time. -
Literature, war and politics, 1642-1668
Posted on January 3, 2012 | No CommentsWhat the two poems could not register (beyond a loaded remark in the Epilogue to the effect that if the play had offended the prince then ‘we’ve now / Three hours done treason here’) was the full extent of the political crisis then unfolding. -
All Singing, All Dancing
Posted on November 22, 2011 | No CommentsSexually explicit jigs were a major part of the attraction of the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration stage, as Lucie Skeaping explains. -
Shakespeare and the Public Discourse of Sovereignty: “Reason of State” in Hamlet
Posted on April 29, 2010 | No CommentsShakespeare and the Public Discourse of Sovereignty: “Reason of State” in Hamlet DiMatteo, Anthony Early Modern Literary Studies 10.2 (September, 2004) Abstract Hamlet marks a turning point in Shakespeare's evolving... -
“That vain Animal”: Rochester’s Satyr and the Theriophilic Paradox
Posted on April 24, 2010 | No Comments"That vain Animal": Rochester's Satyr and the Theriophilic Paradox Rosenfeld, Nancy Early Modern Literary Studies 9.2 (September 2003) Abstract The Satyr against Reason and Mankind by John Wilmot, second Earl... -
“He is turned a ballad-maker”: Broadside Appropriations in Early Modern England
Posted on April 23, 2010 | No Comments"He is turned a ballad-maker": Broadside Appropriations in Early Modern England Fisher, Joshua B. Early Modern Literary Studies 9.2 (September 2003) Abstract Responding to an enduring critical heritage that often... -
The ”popular philosopher”: Plato, Poetry, and Food in Tudor Aesthetics
Posted on April 22, 2010 | No CommentsThe ''popular philosopher'': Plato, Poetry, and Food in Tudor Aesthetics Mitsi, Efterpi Early Modern Literary Studies 9.2 (September 2003) Abstract Sixteenth-century arguments on the role of poetry reveal the ambiguous... -
The Metaphysical Sonnets of John Donne and Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski: A Comparison
Posted on April 22, 2010 | No CommentsThe Metaphysical Sonnets of John Donne and Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski: A Comparison Kay, Magdalena Early Modern Literary Studies 9.2 (September 2003) Abstract Two of the most extraordinary minds of the... -
Meet the Peters
Posted on April 22, 2010 | No CommentsMeet the Peters Abrams, Richard Early Modern Literary Studies 8.2 (September 2002) / Special Issue 10 Abstract Recent internal evidence makes clear that John Ford had a principal hand in... -
“Powdered with Golden Rain”: The Myth of Danae in Early Modern Drama
Posted on April 6, 2010 | No Comments"Powdered with Golden Rain": The Myth of Danae in Early Modern Drama Sanders, Julie Early Modern Literary Studies 8.2 (September 2002) / Special Issue 10 Abstract This essay explores the... -
“To stand upright will ask thee skill”: The Pinnacle and the Paradigm
Posted on April 5, 2010 | No Comments"To stand upright will ask thee skill": The Pinnacle and the Paradigm Barton, Carol Early Modern Literary Studies 6.2 (September, 2000) Abstract Paradise Regain'd was considered inferior to the diffuse... -
Cheerful Girls and Willing Boys: Old and Young Bodies in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Posted on April 5, 2010 | No CommentsCheerful Girls and Willing Boys: Old and Young Bodies in Shakespeare's Sonnets MacInnes, Ian Early Modern Literary Studies 6.2 (September, 2000) Abstract Many twentieth-century critics have been willing to admit... -
Narrative and the Forms of Desire in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis
Posted on April 1, 2010 | No CommentsNarrative and the Forms of Desire in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis Kuchar, Gary Early Modern Literary Studies 5.2 (September, 1999) Abstract Recent articles by Catherine Belsey, Richard Halpern, and James... -
“In this dark world and wide”: Samson Agonistes and the Meaning of Christian Heroism
Posted on April 1, 2010 | No Comments"In this dark world and wide": Samson Agonistes and the Meaning of Christian Heroism Barton, Carol Early Modern Literary Studies 5.2 (September, 1999) Abstract In this essay, I argue that... -
John Donne’s Use of Space
Posted on March 23, 2010 | No CommentsJohn Donne's Use of Space Gorton, Lisa Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2/ Special Issue 3 (September, 1998) Abstract John Donne's writing shows he was fascinated by new discoveries. He took... -
“On the Famous Voyage”: Ben Jonson and Civic Space
Posted on March 23, 2010 | No Comments"On the Famous Voyage": Ben Jonson and Civic Space McRae, Andrew Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2/ Special Issue 3 (September, 1998) Abstract In this essay I want to contextualize Jonson's... -
Translated Geographies: Edmund Spenser’s “The Ruines of Time”
Posted on March 23, 2010 | No CommentsTranslated Geographies: Edmund Spenser's "The Ruines of Time" Griffiths, Huw Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2/ Special Issue 3 (September, 1998) Abstract This paper deals with two ironic movements in relation... -
The Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre
Posted on March 18, 2010 | No CommentsThe Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre Fitter, Chris Early Modern Literary Studies 3.2 (September 1997) Abstract The genre of poetic nocturne needs dating not to the eighteenth... -
New Pleasures Prove: Evidence of Dialectical Disputatio in Early Modern Manuscript Culture
Posted on March 18, 2010 | No CommentsNew Pleasures Prove: Evidence of Dialectical Disputatio in Early Modern Manuscript Culture Downs-Gamble, Margaret Early Modern Literary Studies 2.2 (August 1996): Contents Abstract Thomas Fuller first related the legend that... -
“Not Onely a Pastour, but a Lawyer also”: George Herbert’s Vision of Stuart Magistracy
Posted on March 18, 2010 | No Comments"Not Onely a Pastour, but a Lawyer also": George Herbert's Vision of Stuart Magistracy Powers-Beck, Jeffrey Early Modern Literary Studies 1.2 (August 1995) Abstract "Justice is the ground of charity"... -
‘Lyke Chaucers boye’: Poetry and Penitence in Gascoigne’s Grief of Joye
Posted on March 18, 2010 | No Comments‘Lyke Chaucers boye’: Poetry and Penitence in Gascoigne’s Grief of Joye Laam, Kevin Early Modern Literary Studies 14.1/Special Issue 18 Abstract In The Renaissance Chaucer, Alice Miskimin argues that the... -
The fruits of war: The voice of the soldier in Gascoigne, Rich, and Churchyard
Posted on March 17, 2010 | No CommentsThe fruits of war: The voice of the soldier in Gascoigne, Rich, and Churchyard Heale, Elizabeth Early Modern Literary Studies 14.1/Special Issue 18 Abstract The poem succinctly dramatizes the complex... -
‘Nedelesse Singularitie’: George Gascoigne’s Strategies for Preserving Lyric Delight
Posted on March 17, 2010 | No Comments‘Nedelesse Singularitie’: George Gascoigne’s Strategies for Preserving Lyric Delight Zarnowiecki, Matthew Early Modern Literary Studies 14.1/Special Issue 18 Abstract George Gascoigne’s A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (1573) is among the most... -
Self-portraits and Self-presentation in the Work of George Gascoigne
Posted on March 17, 2010 | No CommentsSelf-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,... -
Introduction: ‘Thus Much I Adventure to Deliver to You’: the Fortunes of George Gascoigne
Posted on March 17, 2010 | No CommentsIntroduction: ‘Thus Much I Adventure to Deliver to You’: the Fortunes of George Gascoigne Hamrick, Stephen Early Modern Literary Studies 14.1/Special Issue 18 Abstract Four hundred thirty years after his... -
Milton’s Titles
Posted on March 16, 2010 | No CommentsMilton’s Titles Hale, John K. Early Modern Literary Studies 13.1 (May, 2007) Abstract Milton’s titling practices are examined from four main standpoints. First, ideas about titling as a speech-act are... -
The Golden Man and the Golden Age: The Relationship of English Poets and the New World Reconsidered
Posted on March 16, 2010 | No CommentsThe Golden Man and the Golden Age: The Relationship of English Poets and the New World Reconsidered McInnis, David Early Modern Literary Studies 13.1 (May, 2007) Abstract George Chapman's De... -
Mourning Eve, Mourning Milton in Paradise Lost
Posted on March 15, 2010 | No CommentsMourning Eve, Mourning Milton in Paradise Lost Hodgson, Elizabeth M. A. Early Modern Literary Studies 11.1 (May, 2005) Abstract Hamlet’s mourning black seems to be a form of armour which... -
A Shroud for the Mind: Ralegh’s Poetic Rewriting of the Self
Posted on March 8, 2010 | No CommentsA Shroud for the Mind: Ralegh's Poetic Rewriting of the Self Tashma-Baum, Miri Early Modern Literary Studies 10.1 (May, 2004) Abstract Sir Walter Ralegh's longest, most complex, and probably unfinished... -
“Thy temperance invincible”: Humanism in Book II of The Faerie Queene and Paradise Regained
Posted on March 8, 2010 | No Comments"Thy temperance invincible": Humanism in Book II of The Faerie Queene and Paradise Regained Sung-Kyun, Yim Early Modern Literary Studies 9.1 (May 2003) Abstract This essay argues that Spenser and... -
“The Legend of the Bischop of St. Androis Lyfe” and the Survival of Scottish Poetry
Posted on March 8, 2010 | No Comments"The Legend of the Bischop of St. Androis Lyfe" and the Survival of Scottish Poetry Parkinson, David J. Early Modern Literary Studies 9.1 (May 2003) Abstract Their favoured manner readily... -
Common-words frequencies, Shakespeare’s style, and the Elegy by W. S.
Posted on March 7, 2010 | No CommentsCommon-words frequencies, Shakespeare's style, and the Elegy by W. S. Craig, Hugh Early Modern Literary Studies 8.1 (May 2002) Abstract In a 1989 book Donald W. Foster presented evidence that... -
The Laureate Dunces and the Death of the Panegyric
Posted on February 25, 2010 | No CommentsThe Laureate Dunces and the Death of the Panegyric Heaney, Peter F. Early Modern Literary Studies 5.1 (May, 1999) Abstract The final, 1743 version of The Dunciad, included amongst its... -
Colon and Semicolon in Donne’s Prose Letters: Practice and Principle
Posted on February 24, 2010 | No CommentsColon and Semicolon in Donne's Prose Letters: Practice and Principle Roth-Schwartz, Emma Early Modern Literary Studies 3.1 (May 1997) Abstract Empirical study of John Donne's colon and semicolon usage reveals... -
Isabella Whitney’s “Lamentation upon the death of William Gruffith”
Posted on February 24, 2010 | No CommentsIsabella Whitney's "Lamentation upon the death of William Gruffith" Martin, Randall Early Modern Literary Studies 3.1 (May 1997) Abstract In two notes published several years ago, R.J. Fehrenbach speculated that... -
Marvell’s Now
Posted on February 23, 2010 | No CommentsMarvell's Now Raman, Shankar Early Modern Culture, No. 6 (2007) Abstract If the subsequent line -- "So restless Cromwell could not cease" -- identifies the "forward youth" with the man... -
The Sonnet in Ruins: Time and the Nation in 1599
Posted on February 23, 2010 | No CommentsThe Sonnet in Ruins: Time and the Nation in 1599 Griffiths, Huw Early Modern Culture, No. 6 (2007) Abstract With this essay, I want to think about an English history...