Renaissance Romance

Renaissance Romance
Author: Nandini Das
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2011
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1409410145

Renaissance Romance examines how and why the fears and expectations surrounding the old genre of romance resonated in early modern England. Examining a range of texts and the fiction of Sir Philip Sidney, Robert Greene and Lady Mary Wroth in particular, Das illustrates the sheer cultural persistence of romance, and reveals how a generational consciousness inherent in the genre transformed the new prose fiction of the period.

Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance

Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance
Author: Helen Hackett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2000-09-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0521641454

This book, first published in 2000, is a study of women as readers and writers of Renaissance romance.

Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance

Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance
Author: Alex Davis
Publisher: DS Brewer
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2003
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780859917773

A reinterpretation of the place and significance of chivalric culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what it says about contemporary attitudes to the medieval.

The Heroines of English Pastoral Romance

The Heroines of English Pastoral Romance
Author: Sue P. Starke
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 184384124X

The figure of the woman as hero in pastoral romance is shown to grow in importance and complexity in this important new study. The genre of pastoral romance flourished dramatically in Renaissance England between 1590 and 1650. One of its key elements is that it is the daughter, not the son, of the gentle family who increasingly becomes the subject of theromance's attempt to define and illustrate heroism. The pastoral heroine's task is paradoxical: to break out of her pastoral paradise in order to ensure its reconstitution. She is the princess, the shepherdess, the Lady, or the virtuous daughter who becomes a repository of honor and virtue in a changing society where traditional chivalric definitions of honor hold decreasing purchase. This groundbreaking book examines the typical challenges facedby the pastoral romance heroine as she matures within the pastoral locus amoenus: the foundling dilemma; the loop-shaped quest: the rhetorical battle; the chastity threat; the reconciliation of beauty to virtue; and familial reunification. It illustrates how the allegorical, symbolic, and psychological characterizations of pastoral heroines in the works of Sidney, Spenser, Wroth, Fletcher, Milton, and Marvell anticipate developments in the representation of female subjectivities normally associated with the novel. SUE P. STARKE is Associate Professor of English at Monmouth University, New Jersey.

A Companion to Romance

A Companion to Romance
Author: Corinne Saunders
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 584
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0470999160

Romance is a varied and fluid literary genre, notoriously difficult to define. This groundbreaking Companion surveys the many permutations of romance throughout the ages. Considers the literary and historical development of the romance genre from its classical origins to the present day Incorporates discussion of the changing readership of romance and of romance’s special relation to women readers Comprises 30 essays written by leading authorities on different periods and sub-genres Challenges the idea that the appeal of romance is exclusively escapist Draws on a wide range of specific and influential literary examples

Reading Popular Romance in Early Modern England

Reading Popular Romance in Early Modern England
Author: Lori Humphrey Newcomb
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2001-12-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780231504850

With the expansion of the publishing industry between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, reading for pleasure became possible for an increasing number of people, not just the wealthy and educated. The growth of the book trade produced, alongside elite literature, a parallel popular literature. Lori Humphrey Newcomb examines the proliferation of romances in early modern England, as well as their vilification by elite writers. Using as her case study Robert Greene's Pandosto (1585), an Elizabethan prose romance that inspired Shakespeare's late play, The Winter's Tale, she shows that the two forms of literature influenced each other profoundly. Because Shakespeare's works are considered timeless literary achievements, critics have distanced his plays from his romantic sources—a separation that until now has gone unquestioned. Newcomb undermines this assumption, providing a fascinating account of an early bestseller's incarnations over 250 years of literary history.

Maternity and Romance Narratives in Early Modern England

Maternity and Romance Narratives in Early Modern England
Author: Karen Bamford
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2016-05-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317099400

Though recent scholarship has focused both on motherhood and on romance literature in early modern England, until now, no full length volume has addressed the notable intersections between the two topics. This collection contributes to the scholarly investigation of maternity in early modern England by scrutinizing romance narratives in various forms, considering motherhood not as it was actually lived, but as it was figured in the fantasy world of romance by authors ranging from Edmund Spenser to Margaret Cavendish. Contributors explore the traditional association between romance and women, both as readers of fiction and as tellers of ’old wives’ tales,’ as well as the tendency of romance plots, with their emphasis on the family and its reproduction, to foreground matters of maternity. Collectively, the essays in this volume invite reflection on the uses to which Renaissance culture put maternal stereotypes (the virgin mother, the cruel step-dame), as well as the powerful fears and desires that mothers evoke, assuage and sometimes express in the fantasy world of romance.

Empire on the English Stage 1660-1714

Empire on the English Stage 1660-1714
Author: Bridget Orr
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2001-08-23
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521773508

Empire on the English Stage 1660-1714 analyzes Restoration and early eighteenth-century drama in terms of empire.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700
Author: Elizabeth Scott-Baumann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 897
Release: 2023-01-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198860633

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 brings together new work by scholars across the globe, from some of the founding figures in early modern women's writing to those early in their careers and defining the field now. It investigates how and where women gained access to education, how they developed their literary voice through varied genres including poetry, drama, and letters, and how women cultivated domestic and technical forms of knowledge from recipes and needlework to medicines and secret codes. Chapters investigate the ways in which women's writing was an integral part of the intellectual culture of the period, engaging with male writers and traditions, while also revealing the ways in which women's lives and writings were often distinctly different, from women prophetesses to queens, widows, and servants. It explores the intersections of women writing in English with those writing in French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, in Europe and in New England, and argues for an archipelagic understanding of women's writing in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England. Finally, it reflects on--and challenges--the methodologies which have developed in, and with, the field: book and manuscript history, editing, digital analysis, premodern critical race studies, network theory, queer theory, and feminist theory. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 captures the most innovative work on early modern women's writing in English at present.

The History of British Women's Writing, 1610-1690

The History of British Women's Writing, 1610-1690
Author: M. Suzuki
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2011-01-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0230305504

During the seventeenth century, in response to political and social upheavals such as the English Civil Wars, women produced writings in both manuscript and print. This volume represents recent scholarship that has uncovered new texts as well as introduced new paradigms to further our understanding of women's literary history during this period.