Untutored Lines: The Making of the English Epyllion

ISBN-13: 9780748644650 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 232 str.

P. Weaver, William

Opis

A compelling cultural reinterpretation of humanist discourses of boyhood The English epyllion, the highly erotic mythological verse that swept the London literary scene in the 1590s, is as much about rhetoric as about sex. So argues William Weaver in this fascinating study of Renaissance education and poetry. Rhetoric, moreover, is erotic. Far being merely formal, rhetoric is the key to deciphering the cultural meanings of an enigmatic genre.Weaver attends to one of the epyllion's defining dramas: boys in transition to adulthood. Whereas recent studies of the epyllion have posited sexuality as the primary, even exclusive, means of representing beautiful boys, Weaver discovers that Renaissance male sexuality itself is an effect of a disciplinary drama of pedagogical transition from boyhood to adolescence, grammar to rhetoric. This drama of differentiation, lucidly expounded by Weaver, is at the heart of the erotic epyllia of Shakespeare, Marlowe and their imitators.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Rites of passage; Scenes of performance: 1. Progymnasmata: Humanist Rites of Passage; The progymnasmata as an introduction to the art of rhetoric; Disciplinary boundaries in the English grammar school; Literary exercise between the disciplines; From discursive plenitude to disciplinary correction; Part I. Rudiments of Eloquence: Boyhood; 2. Fabula: Observing 'Amorous Rites' in Hero and Leander; Musaeus among the rudiments of eloquence; Marlowe's paraphrase; Leander in the scene of culture; Puberty rites and the English epyllion; 3. Chreia: Making Themes in Venus and Adonis; Boyhood study; Boyhood style; 'The lesson is but plain'; Venus' frustrated banquet; 4. Narratiuncula: Coming of Age in Oenone and Paris; Vivid narration; Paris at the crossroads; Paris in the upper forms; Irony, pathos, and the 'courteous reader'; Part II. First Exercises: Adolescence; 5. Narratio and Confirmatio: Forensic Performance in Lucrece; Adolescent study and style; Lucrece's narratio; Night, opportunity, and time; Troy and the perjured self; Lucrece's confirmatio; 6. Encomium: Antinous as Lord of Misrule in Orchestra; Aphthonian man; Tedious praise; Misrule; Poetic rule; 7. Thesis: Controlling Speech in Cephalus and Procris; 'Methinks the man amendeth the matter much'; Man, horse, and dogs; On contrarieties he answer made; Secret muse; Epilogue: Jesus' First Exercises in Paradise Regained; Appendix; Notes.