Early modern writing and the privatization of experience / Nick Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Nick (Nicholas Mark)

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Continuum literary studies

Continuum Literary Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Privacy in literature.

Individualism in literature.

Physical Description:

235 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

Summary:

"Reading a wide range of Early Modern authors and exploring their political, philosophical and scientific contexts, this book charts the movement away from reliance on collective experience, and the construction of the individual as the locus of authentic perception, thought and feeling, which occurs between the fourteenth and early eighteenth centuries. According to Nick Davis, much English writing of the period takes part in this development, examining it, resisting it, and advancing it in several forms. Among the writers discussed are Chaucer, Langland, Thomas More, Spenser, Nashe, Jonson, Middleton, the Shakespeare of the Henry IV - Henry V plays and The Winter's Tale, Hobbes, Bunyan, Defoe and Pope. From there, the book goes on to explore the legacy of Early Modern writing in our contemporary constructions of private experience"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note:

Introduction: Reflections on the Common

Medieval Writers, Modern Theorists \ 1. Collectivism in Renaissance Culture

More, Nashe and others \ 2. Individualism and the Common in The Faerie Queene \ 3. Shakespeare and the Popular \ 4. The City as Commune

Jonson, Defoe, Pope and others \ 5. Hobbes, Bunyan and the Resymbolisiation of Individual Experience \ 6. Retrospect

Shakespeare Reinvents Allegory \ Bibliography \ Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781441166821

1441166823

OCLC:

855977488