Panegyric of the monarch and its social context under Elizabeth I and James I

The thesis examines the relationship between poetry and politics under Elizabeth and James, tracing certain changes in modes of artistic representation through historical analysis of particular masques and entertainments. The introductory chaper discusses the close connection between poetry and ceremonial in the Renaissance: in panegyric the poet's private imagination is subordinated to public images, and his art is one of ceremonial "ornamentation". Subsequent chapters discuss the effects of social, political and religious changes on this ceremonial poetic. Chapter 31 relates the political symbolism of Tho Faerie Queene to the tradition of pageantry on which it was based, and analyzes the growing tension in the later books between public and private vallies. Chapter III discusses the new developments of the 1590s, arguing that both in politics and in literature new tensions were being felt. The first part deals with the poets associated with Essex, the second with the poetry of Sir Walter Ralegh. Chapter IV discusses the effects on panegyric of the new, less external concepts of decorum introduced by the writers of the "plain style", with special reference to FullcGreville and Samuel Daniel. Chapter Y deals with Jonson's masques, showing that while in political concent they mirror the line taken by the king and his more conservative advisers, in artistic form they display an ambivalence characteristic of Jonson's work. Chapter VI discusses the Jacobean poets wco imitated Spenser, showing the continuity of l.heir political concerns from the public poetry of the 1590s and arguing that Spenserian poetry, especially pastoral, became a protest against the corruption of the Jacobean court. A newly discovered draft of a masque for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in 1613 is included in an Appendix

Milton, Lucy Hutchinson, and the Lucretian Sublime

Lucretius’s De rerum natura is a neglected source for the emergence of the theory and practice of the sublime in the early modern period. This paper shows how two committed Puritans, the poets John Milton (1608–1674) and Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681), engaged with Lucretius. After examining Lucretius’s quest for sublimity in subject and style, the article considers the ways in which Milton and Hutchinson responded to his presentation of the gods, his cosmology, his treatment of the death of the soul, his politics, and the ways in which sublimity might be gendered

The manuscript

Part of the introduction to a critical edition of Lucy Hutchinson's translation of Lucretius' De rerum natura. The edition takes its text from a manuscript written out by Hutchinson and a scribe (British Library Additional MS 19333). This section of the introduction describes and analyses the manuscript's physical features--watermarks, gatherings and hand-writing--in an attempt to reconstruct the stages through which Hutchinson and her scribe went in putting the manuscript together