Rare Poems of the Seventeenth Century

Rare Poems of the Seventeenth Century
Author: L. Birkett Marshall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2014-07-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1107418216

Originally published in 1936, this book attempts to provide a more nuanced picture of poetry in the seventeenth century.

English Poetry of the Seventeenth Century

English Poetry of the Seventeenth Century
Author: George Parfitt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317896688

Provides a comprehensive and entertaining account of the vitality and variety of achievement in seventeenth-century English poetry. Revised and up-dated throughout, Dr Parfitt has added new material on poets as varied as Marvell and Traherne. There is also a completely new chapter on women poets of the seventeenth century which considers the significant contributions of writers such as Katherine Philips and Margaret Cavendish. The proven quality and success of Dr Parfitt's survey makes this the essential companion for the teacher and student of seventeenth-century verse.

Impossible Desire and the Limits of Knowledge in Renaissance Poetry

Impossible Desire and the Limits of Knowledge in Renaissance Poetry
Author: Wendy Beth Hyman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2019-04-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192574418

Impossible Desire and the Limits of Knowledge in Renaissance Poetry examines the limits of embodiment, knowledge, and representation at a disregarded nexus: the erotic carpe diem poem in early modern England. These macabre seductions offer no compliments or promises, but instead focus on the lovers' anticipated decline, and--quite stunningly given the Reformation context--humanity's relegation not to a Christian afterlife but to a Marvellian 'desert of vast Eternity.' In this way, a poetic trope whose classical form was an expression of pragmatic Epicureanism became, during the religious upheaval of the Reformation, an unlikely but effective vehicle for articulating religious doubt. Its ambitions were thus largely philosophical, and came to incorporate investigations into the nature of matter, time, and poetic representation. Renaissance seduction poets invited their auditors to participate in a dangerous intellectual game, one whose primary interest was expanding the limits of knowledge. The book theorizes how Renaissance lyric's own fragile relationship to materiality and time, and its self-conscious relationship to making, positioned it to grapple with these 'impossible' metaphysical and representational problems. Although attentive to poetics, the book also challenges the commonplace view that the erotic invitation is exclusively a lyrical mode. Carpe diem's revival in post-Reformation Europe portends its radicalization, as debates between man and maid are dramatized in disputes between abstractions like chastity and material facts like death. Offered here is thus a theoretical reconsideration of the generic parameters and aspirations of the carpe diem trope, wherein questions about embodiment and knowledge are also investigations into the potentialities of literary form.

Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture

Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture
Author: Timothy Raylor
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1994
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780874135237

During the Interregnum Mennes and Smith were actively involved in royalist subversion, and their verse was first published at this time as part of a royalist propaganda effort.