Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to DrydenThis is a major study of the relation between poetry and politcs in sixteenth and seventeenth century English literature, focusing in particular on the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and Dryden. Howard Erskine-Hill argues that the major tradition of political allusion is not, as has often been argued, that of the political allegory of Dryden's Absalom and Architophel, and other overtly political poems, but rather a more shifting and less systematic practice, often involving equivocal or multiple reference. Drawing on the revisionist trend in recent historiography, and taking issue with recent New Historicist criticism, the book offers new and thought-provoking readings of familiar texts. For example, Shakespeare's Histories, far from endorsing a conservative Tudor myth, are shown to examine and reject divine-right kingship in favour of a political vision of what the succession crisis of the 1590s required. A forgotten political aspect of Hamlet is restored and an anti-Cromwellian strain is identified in Milton's Paradise Lost. Again and again, Professor Erskine-Hill is able to show how some of the most powerful works of the period, works which in the past have been read for their aesthetic achievement and generalized wisdom, in fact contain a political component crucial to our understanding of the poem. |
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Page 247
... Sebastian's father , Sebastian bursts out : Base groveling Soul , who know'st not honours worth ; But weigh'st it out in mercenary Scales ; The Secret pleasure of a generous Act , Is the great minds great bribe . ALVAREZ . Show me that ...
... Sebastian's father , Sebastian bursts out : Base groveling Soul , who know'st not honours worth ; But weigh'st it out in mercenary Scales ; The Secret pleasure of a generous Act , Is the great minds great bribe . ALVAREZ . Show me that ...
Page 248
... Sebastian , is ' but a petty reparation too ; | But all I have to give . ' DORAX . Your pardon , Sir ; You may do more , and ought . SEBASTIAN . What , more than death ? DORAX . Death ? Why that's Children's sport : a Stage - Play ...
... Sebastian , is ' but a petty reparation too ; | But all I have to give . ' DORAX . Your pardon , Sir ; You may do more , and ought . SEBASTIAN . What , more than death ? DORAX . Death ? Why that's Children's sport : a Stage - Play ...
Page 249
... Sebastian , not primarily the Sebastian of the earlier acts but the spiritual as well as martial hero who renounces his throne in Act V. Indeed a general , idealiz- ing , allusion in Sebastian to James seems to run through the text : in ...
... Sebastian , not primarily the Sebastian of the earlier acts but the spiritual as well as martial hero who renounces his throne in Act V. Indeed a general , idealiz- ing , allusion in Sebastian to James seems to run through the text : in ...
Contents
List of Illustrations བ | 11 |
Introduction I | 11 |
The First Tetralogy and King John | 46 |
Copyright | |
9 other sections not shown
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