Renaissance Texts, Medieval Subjectivities (Rethinking Petrarchan Desire from Wyatt to Shakespeare)

Synopsis

In A Major Contribution To The Burgeoning Area Of Study That Crosses Between Early Modern Texts And Premodern Cultures, Danila Sokolov Argues For The Necessity Of Reading The Work Of English Petrarchan Writers In Light Of Earlier Medieval Forms Of Poetic Subjectivity. By Doing Just That, This Book Directly Challenges One Of The Most Enduring Myths Of Contemporary Criticism And Shows That The Many Innovations Associated With The Poetry Of Petrarchism Derive From Medieval Subjectivities That Continue To Inform Modern Ideas Of Selfhood And Modernity More Generally. Introduction: Vernacular Memories Of English Petrarchism -- The Measure Of Meed: Symbolic Economies In Langland, Wyatt, And Spenser -- Chaucerian Melancholy In Renaissance England: Surrey's Songes And Sonnets And Sidney's Astrophil And Stella -- Sovereign Love, Medieval And Early Modern: The Arts Of Marriage In The Casket Sonnets And The Kingis Quair -- Petrarchan Afterlives Of Erotic Legality: Love And Law In Lydgate, Daniel, And Drayton -- Medieval Pathologies Of Affect: Reading Hoccleve And Henryson In Shakespeare's Sonnets -- Conclusion: The English Straine Of Renaissance Petrarchism: Poetry, Genealogy, Hermeneutics. Danila Sokolov. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.