Renaissance suppliants : poetry, antiquity, reconciliation / Leah Whittington.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Whittington, Leah, 1979- author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Reconciliation in literature.

Emotions in literature.

Power (Philosophy) in literature.

European literature--Renaissance, 1450-1600--History and criticism.

European literature.

European literature--Renaissance.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

ix pages, 9 unnumbered pages, 239 pages : illustrations, facsimiles ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

Renaissance Suppliants studies supplication as a social and literary event in the long European Renaissance, arguing that scenes of supplication are defining episodes in a literary tradition stretching back to Greco-Roman antiquity, A ritual form of communication in moments of extreme helplessness and need, supplication speaks to the ways that people negotiate conflict, manage situations in which relationships threaten to unravel, and live together despite grave inequalities. Renaissance writers found in classical scenes of supplication paradigmatic episodes for exploring fundamental questions of politics and religion, ethics and identity, sexuality and family, and they transformed the literary and social structures of the ancient past to suit the needs of the present. By taking up different aspects of Renaissance supplicatory discourse in erotic poetry, drama, and epic, Leah Whittington argues that postures of humiliation and abjection become central for writers thinking about problems of antagonism, difference, and hierarchy. Major reconsiderations of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Milton show how Renaissance poets invest gestures of self-abasement with unexpected power and dignity. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Supplicatory Dynamics; Problems, Paradoxes, and Paradigms 1

2 "Spare this life": Pleading, Pardon, and the Reader in Vergil's Aeneid 46

3 Pity, Mercy, and Desire: Supplication and Erotic Psychology in Pettarch's Africa and Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta 82

4 "Let us shame him with our knees": Constraint and Coercion in Shakespeare's Richard II and Coriolanus 114

5 "Thy humiliation shall exalt": Hierarchy and Reconciliation in Milton's Paradise Lost 160

6 Epilogue 193.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-229) and index.

Local Notes:

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

ISBN:

0198754442

9780198754442

OCLC:

927381636