Matter and making in early English poetry : literary production from Chaucer to Sidney / Taylor Cowdery.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cowdery, Taylor, 1986- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in medieval literature ; 121.

Cambridge studies in medieval literature ; 121

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English poetry--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism.

English poetry.

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

Literature and society--England--History--To 1500.

Literature and society.

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

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 324 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

What is literature made from? During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, this question preoccupied the English court poets, who often claimed that their poems were not original creations, but adaptations of pre-existing materials. Their word for these materials was 'matter,' while the term they used to describe their labor was 'making,' or the act of reworking this matter into a new - but not entirely new - form. By tracing these ideas through the work of six major early poets, this book offers a revisionist literary history of late- medieval and early modern court poetry. It reconstructs premodern theories of making and contrasts them with more modern theories of literary labor, such as 'authorship.' It studies the textual, historical, and philosophical sources that the court tradition used for its matter. Most of all, it demonstrates that the early English court poets drew attention to their source materials as a literary tactic, one that stressed the process by which a poem had been made.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 15 Jun 2023).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781009223768 (ebook)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.