Untutored lines : the making of the English epyllion / by William P. Weaver.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weaver, William P.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture

Edinburgh critical studies in renaissance culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Epic poetry, English--History and criticism.

Epic poetry, English.

English poetry--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English poetry.

Sex in literature.

Sex customs in literature.

Boys in literature.

Sex customs--England--History--16th century.

Sex customs.

Masculinity--England--History--16th century.

Masculinity.

History.

England.

Physical Description:

ix, 219 pages ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

Making of the English epyllion

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

Summary:

These original interpretations of Renaissance culture focus on literary texts in English and in a range of vernacular languages. They also deal with the reception and transformation of the Greco-Roman literary, political and intellectual heritage.

The English epyllion, the highly erotic mythological verse that swept the London literary scene in the 1590s, is as much about rhetoric as about sex. So argues William Weaver in this fascinating study of Renaissance education and poetry. Rhetoric, moreover, is erotic. Far from being merely formal, rhetoric is the key to deciphering the cultural meanings of an enigmatic genre.

Weaver attends to one of the epyllion's defining dramas: boys in transition to adulthood. Whereas recent studies of the epyllion have posited sexuality as the primary, even exclusive, means of representing beautiful boys, Weaver discovers that Renaissance male sexuality itself is an effect of a disciplinary drama of pedagogical transition from boyhood to adolescence, grammar to rhetoric. This drama of differentiation, lucidly expounded by Weaver, is at the heart of the erotic epyllia of Shakespeare, Marlowe and their imitators. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Progymnasmata: Humanist Rites of Passage 14

Part I Rudiments of Eloquence: Boyhood

2 Fabula: Observing 'Amorous Rites' in Hero and Leander 47

3 Chreia: Making Themes in Venus and Adonis 70

4 Narratiuncula: Coming of Age in Oenone and Paris 94

Part II First Exercises: Adolescence

5 Narratio and Confirmatio: Forensic Performance in Lucrece 123

6 Encomium: Antinous as Lord of Misrule in Orchestra 148

7 Thesis: Controlling Speech in Cephalus and Procris 169.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [203]-214) and index.

ISBN:

9780748644650

0748644652

9780748644667

0748644660

9780748649198

0748649190

9780748649204

0748649204

OCLC:

766317522