The English wits : literature and sociability in early modern England / Michelle O'Callaghan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Callaghan, Michelle.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and society--England--London--History--16th century.

Literature and society.

Literature and society--England--London--History--17th century.

Authors--Societies, etc--History--16th century.

Authors.

Authors--Societies, etc--History--17th century.

Authors--Societies, etc.

History.

London (England)--Intellectual life--16th century.

London (England).

London (England)--Intellectual life--17th century.

England--London.

Physical Description:

viii, 234 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Summary:

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Inns of Court and fashionable London taverns developed a culture of clubbing, urban sociability and wit. The convivial societies that emerged created rituals to define social identities and to engage in literary play and political discussion. Michelle O'Callaghan argues that the lawyer-wits, including John Hoskyns, in company with authors such as John Donne, Ben Jonson and Thomas Coryate, consciously reinvigorated humanist traditions of learned play. Their experiments with burlesque, banquet literature, parody and satire resulted in a volatile yet creative dialogue between civility and licence, and between pleasure and the violence of scurrilous words. The wits inaugurated a mode of literary fellowship that shaped the history and literature of sociability in the seventeenth century. This study will provide many new insights for historians and literary scholars of the period.

Contents:

1 Gentleman lawyers at the Inns of Court 10

2 Ben Jonson, the lawyers and the wits 35

3 Taverns and table talk 60

4 Wits in the House of Commons 81

5 Coryats Crudities (1611) and the sociability of print 102

6 Traveller for the English wits 128

7 Afterlives of the wits 153.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 178-228) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0521860849

9780521860840

OCLC:

72148406