The performance of nobility in early modern European literature / David M. Posner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Posner, David Matthew, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in Renaissance literature and culture ; 33.

Cambridge studies in Renaissance literature and culture ; 33

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

European literature.

Nobility in literature.

Nobility of character in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 272 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This valuable study illuminates the idea of nobility as display, as public performance, in Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature and society. Ranging widely from Castiglione and French courtesy manuals, through Montaigne and Bacon, to the literature of the Grand Siècle, David Posner examines the structures of public identity in the period. He focuses on the developing tensions between, on the one hand, literary or imaginative representations of 'nobility' and, on the other, the increasingly problematic historical position of the nobility themselves. These tensions produce a transformation in the notion of the noble self as a performance, and eventually doom court society and its theatrical mode of self-presentation. Situated at the intersection of rhetorical and historical theories of interpretation, this book contributes significantly to our understanding of the role of literature both in analysing and in shaping social identity.

Contents:

1. Introduction: "The Noble Hart"

2. Montaigne and the staging of the self

3. Mask and error in Francis Bacon

4. Noble Romans: Corneille and the theatre of aristocratic revolt

5. La Bruyere and the end of the theatre of nobility.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-266) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-11828-X

0-521-03487-6

1-280-15456-X

0-511-11810-4

0-511-14987-5

0-511-30989-9

0-511-48389-9

0-511-04882-3

OCLC:

559639780