Toward an Augustan Poetic: Edmund Waller\u27s Reform of English Poetry

The almost universal adulation given Edmund Waller in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—an adulation which, often as not, attached to his reform of poetry—has been commonly accepted with little question of the grounds on which it is based. In this essay Alexander Ward Allison presents for the first time a specific analysis of the changes from Jacobean modes which Waller made, suggesting in the course of his analysis that the seventeenth century saw not a dissociation of sensibility, but rather a new fusion, of which Waller is a type. By a careful and detailed reading of the poems, Mr. Allison shows how Waller, writing in the genre of occasional verse, replaced the rational, ethical, direct Jacobean mode with a tone of geniality and personal detachment supported by an easy association of ideas and images. The same examination reveals how Waller elevated his diction and how, under the influence of Fairfax, he continued the “sweet” tradition of Spenser in his smoothly modulated metric. That to neoclassical poets Waller constituted a paragon is evident from their sometimes excessive praise; that he is one indeed is demonstrated by Allison with a style which enjoys an Augustan nicety. Alexander Ward Allison is professor of English at the University of Michigan.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/1027/thumbnail.jp

A study of eroticism in English non-dramatic poetry 1580-1680.

PhDFor a hundred years, between Marlowe's. translation of Ovid's Amores in the 1580s and Rochester's death in 1680, a current of erotic feeling flows through English amatory verse which has as its source the Ovidian Art of Love. This Art sees sexuality as an autonomous activity and it elaborates amatory techniques and scenarios, described individually as 'topics', to enhance the mutual pleasure of both parties. Such a view of sexual relations challenges the prevailing amatory codes of courtly love and Christian monogamy and not infrequently clashes with them. This study traces the impact of the Art of Love upon all the principal non-dramatic writers of the period with the exception of Shakespeare, The Elizabethan appetite for the sensuous and suggestive is shown to develop into the more calculated sensualism of the Caroline court poets which in turn evolves into a deliberate cultivation of predatory appetite at the Restoration. With Rochester's death in 1680 begins a period of erotic decline,, A concluding chapter charts the eighteenth-century transformation of the Ovidian tradition into sentimentalism, raillery and pornography

The poetry of Thomas Carew: A critical study

Purpose: This purpose of this paper is to provide a single ordered critical study of the poetry of Thomas Carew, bringing together, under one heading, and considering the various brief critical studies on Carew written over the past three centuries. Many of the thoughts explored in this paper have been briefly explored in other works, but never, to the belief of the author, have their significance been examined as thoroughly as this paper hopes to do, or in the total perspective of all of his work. I. His Life. This chapter provides a brief examination of the life and times of Thomas Carew in emphasis of his representative standing of the Caroline courtier poets. II. His Lyrics. This chapter examines those lyrics of Thomas Carew considered to be the most representative of his work. It considers those lyrics which are perhaps representative of the mean of his poetic achievement, several lyrics which provide an interesting deviation in style from the preceding ones, and those lyrics which represent the very best of Carew. III. His Occasional Verse. This chapter discusses the occasional verse of Thomas Carew, considering his wedding celebrations, obituary pieces, and his verse-epistles, in an attempt to isolate various characteristics of his style which can also be seen reflected in his lyrics, and to gain a greater insight into both the poet and his style. IV. His Sources. This chapter considers the various borrowings Carew made from other poets, most particularly Donne, Jonson, and Marino, and both the extent and nature of their influence upon his work. V. His Achievement: This chapter attempts to evaluate Carew's achievement, and analyze the method by which he wrote lyrics of a consistently high standard. It examines his verse structure, his imagery, and several of the motifs which recur frequently in his verse. Appendix: His Critical Reputation. This chapter is a study of Carew's critical reputation from his day until the present.<p

The Influence and Association of Paratext in Caroline Drama

This thesis is an in-depth analysis of the alliances, reputations, and meanings that were created within the Caroline dramatic community as a result of the playwrights' meticulous use of paratext. By scrutinizing the paratexts (including prologues and epilogues, commendatory verses, and dedications to patrons and readers) of three different Caroline authors (William Davenant, Richard Brome, and John Ford), I have provided a picture of the divided and conflicting political and social landscapes of the professional theatre during the reign of Charles I. Through the use of such framing material, playwrights situated themselves in coteries that promoted very distinct outlooks on the purpose and place of drama. Within the commercial theatre, the desire to please, as well as shape diverse and complicated audience tastes, was forwarded in both printed and performed ancillary material. Playwrights used paratext to attract a specific audience to their published plays and explain the motives and meanings embedded in these texts. This material, while promoting one set of values, also worked to condemn competing ideals, as authors criticized peers in order to advance their own reputations and their own plays. Paratext was included as a matter of course in the era, to explain the author's intentions in writing the play and to advertise the author in a specific and bespoke light. The paratexts that accompanied the plays of Davenant, Brome, and Ford helped shape and expand the reputation each man tried to form for himself. It also conditioned the reading of his plays, both in terms of meaning and message, as well as in how the play reflected the attitudes each held in relation to the theatre, his contemporaries, and his own public image. Davenant, Brome, and Ford had very different ideas on the role of the theatre and drama in society. These ideas were made known in the ancillary material and paratexts that accompanied their performed and printed plays. This thesis looks at how paratext and ancillary material were used in different ways by these men to shape their authorial reputations and temper audience reactions to their plays. It analyses how important and necessary paratext became to these playwrights writing from 1625 to the close of the theatres in 1642. Through these three playwrights, a wider investigation of how paratext was used to situate playwrights in the theatrical and literary communities of the Caroline era emerges.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

James Shirley, The Dukes Mistris : an old-spelling edition

James Shirley's The Dukes Mistris was licensed in 1 636 and published in 1638. The play has not previously been edited in accordance with modern bibliographical standards; the only available text outside copies of the original Quarto is the modernised edition prepared by William Gi'fford and Alexander Dyce for The Dramatic Works and Poems of 1833. This edition aims to revive critical and dramatic interest in the play itself while establishing a text which will provide a sound basis for scholars and students of Renaissance drama alike. My edition is based on a collation of twenty copies of the 1638 Quarto (at least six of each of the three variant states which exist). All variant readings deriving from press correction are recorded. The original spelling has been retained and punctuation is emended sparingly. All emendations are included in the textual footnotes, and substantive emendations are discussed in the commentary. The commentary includes interpretive comments, glosses, textual notes, dramatic analogues and explanation of contemporary references. The Dukes Mistris, a tragicomedy, was written during a period when Charles I was ruling without Parliament and when prlciosite was flourishing at court. One of the most significant aspects of the play, I believe, is its relevance to the contemporary political and social situation.' The introduction to the edition discusses in some detail the thematic concerns of the play and their context: love and service, the royal prerogative and Platonic love. While the ideas of the play add considerable interest, they are set in a chain of love entanglements which are conventional in tragicomedy. Shirley's dramatic craftsmanship is approached from the perspective of tragicomedy and its conventions since the language, characterisation and structure of the play reflect his skilful blending of tragic and comic modes. The Dukes Mistris makes no profound statements but it is successful tragicomedy and effective theatre. In play-text, introduction and commentary, the staging of the play receives consideration in the hope that this edition will encourage production on the modern stage

Playgoing in Early Modern London After Shakespeare (1616-1642)

Das Hauptziel der Arbeit ist die Rekonstruktion der sozialen und kulturellen Rahmenbedingungen, unter denen dramatische Stücke zwischen Shakespeares Tod im Jahre 1616 und der Schließung der Theater im Jahre 1642 produziert wurden. Mithilfe einer Vielfalt zeitgenössischer Quellen erfolgt eine Rekonstruktion des historischen Kontextes aus zeitgenössischer Sicht. Die Arbeit analysiert wer die Menschen waren, für die Shakespeares Nachfolger ihre Stücke für die öffentlichen und privaten Bühnen Londons schrieben. Des Weiteren stellt die Arbeit dar, wie der Gang ins Theater in einer bisher von der Forschung nur wenig beachteten Epoche aussah und zeigt auf, wer genau in diesen Jahren ins Theater ging und wie diese Zuschauer und ihre Erwartungen an die Bühne durch eine Vielzahl externer und stetig wechselnder kultureller, politischer und sozialer Faktoren (z.B. Bärenhatzen, Prostitution, Hinrichtungen etc.) beeinflusst wurden. Zudem liegt ein weiteres Hauptaugenmerk der Arbeit darauf, wie die drei Autoren John Ford, Richard Brome und James Shirley in den Prologen und Epilogen zu ihren Stücken die Gegenwart der Zuschauer thematisiert und die Entwicklung des frühneuzeitlichen Theaters metadramatisch und selbstreflexiv angesprochen haben. The central aim of this thesis was firstly to reconstruct the socio-cultural field within which dramatic plays were originally produced between the year of Shakespeare's death in 1616 and the fatal closure of all playhouses in 1642. Using a wide range of contemporaneous data and thus reconstructing the historical context by taking a contemporary perspective, the thesis analyses who the people were for whom Shakespeare's successors wrote their plays to be performed on London's public and private stages. In addition to this, the thesis highlights what playgoing in general was like in Early Modern London during a period which has largely been neglected by modern scholarship. It illustrates who exactly went to the theatres in these years and how these playgoers and their expectations towards the stage were shaped by a wide range of constantly shifting cultural, political and social circumstances (e.g. bear-baiting, prostitution, executions etc.). In addition to this, another main objective of this thesis was secondly to examine how the Caroline playwrights John Ford, Richard Brome and James Shirley acknowledged their audiences and commented upon internal and external factors conditioning the development of professional acting and playwriting by means of metatheatrical and self-reflexive framing devices, i.e. prologues and epilogues.

Verse Form in English Renaissance Poetry: A Catalogue of Stanza Patterns

'Poetry is form and permanent poetry is permanent form', says Paul Fussell. Form has ever been one of the problems poets encounter when deciding to building their poems. Views of traditional stanzaic forms reflect to some extent standpoint towards authority, hierarchy, and history. Some poets wrote most of their verse in the traditional stanza forms. Others favour more exotic forms. Others again, tried to abandon established forms and create new ones

'Carry not a picke-tooth in your mouth': an exploration of oral health in early-modern writings

This thesis is an exploration of various aspects of oral health in the early-modern period. It examines evidence taken from texts belonging to a range of genres including surgical manuals, botanical texts, midwifery manuals, poets and plays. Building on existing academic work relating to the history of dentistry and venereal disease, it aims to assimilate material from across science and the arts in order to gain a sense of what general social expectations were in relation to the condition of the teeth and palate, and how people suffering with a decline in oral health were advised, or what treatments were available to them either from a professional or in the home. It aims to challenge existing preconceptions that people living in this period displayed a negligent attitude towards the health of their teeth and oral hygiene. The thesis contains four chapters which each focus on a different aspect of oral health, though many themes recur across all four chapters. The first chapter investigates advice that was available in print, and therefore likely to be in public consciousness, to the early-modern individual in relation to maintaining their teeth. It then considers the portrayal of unattractive teeth and bad breath in early-modern literature. Chapter Two deals with early-modern explanations of what caused the toothache and how it could be remedied. Analysis of the depictions of toothache in various poetry and plays follows in order to explore how wider society made sense of medical thinking at the time. The palate becomes the sole focus of Chapter Three, which considers what specific health concerns posed a threat to the condition of the roof of the mouth, and what difficulties could arise for the individual whose palate has been damaged by disease or injury. The thesis concludes with a chapter which investigates the history of a congenital oral birth defect, the cleft lip and palate. The thesis was designed to allow each chapter to deal with a separate facet of oral health; they encompass in turn: oral hygiene, dental pain, the impact of disease on the palate and an exploration of an oral birth defect. An undercurrent of the thesis is to use a range of material to ascertain a realistic idea of what it was like for an individual to experience oral health difficulties in this period. It is therefore interested in how society perceived people who were experiencing problems with their oral health, and what could be done to improve their quality of life. The research presented here represents a contribution to the field of the history of oral health and aims to provoke further questions relating to the responsibility early-modern individuals took for their own oral health, and the specific situations in which intervention, either surgical or medicinal, was deemed necessary