Description
Book SynopsisExamines how English writers from the Elizabethan period to the Restoration transformed and contested the ancient ideal of the virtuous mean. This book argues that English authors used the ancient schema of means and extremes in innovative and contentious ways hitherto ignored by scholars.
Trade Review"A worthy contribution to the ongoing study of the mentality of the early modern period and its relationship to the classical and Christian heritage."--Choice "[Scodel's] range of material and reference is admirable. He moves easily and with panache through five sections... There is much to admire and learn from in Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature."--Andrew Hadfield, Times Literary Supplement "An excellent book, ambitious in scope and masterful in its management of scholarly resources and interpretive techniques."--Jon A. Quitslund, Renaissance Quarterly
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments and Note on Citations vii Introduction: Ancient Paradigms in Modern Conflicts 1 PART ONE: Two Early Modern Revisions of the Mean 19 1. Donne and the Personal Mean 21 2. "Mediocrities "and "Extremities ": Baconian Flexibility and the Aristotelian Mean 48 PART TWO: Means and Extremes in Early Modern Georgic 77 3. Moderation,Temperate Climate,and National Ethos from Spenser to Milton 79 4. Concord, Conquest, and Commerce from Spenser to Cowley 111 PART THREE: Erotic Excess and Early Modern Social Conflicts 143 5. Passionate Extremes and Noble Natures from Elizabethan to Caroline Literature 145 6. Erotic Excess versus Interest in Mid-to Late-Seventeenth-Century Literature 170 PART FOUR: Moderation and Excess in the Seventeenth-Century Symposiastic Lyric 197 7. Drinking and the Politics of Poetic Identity from Jonson to Herrick 199 8. Drinking and Cultural Conflict from Lovelace to Rochester 225 PART FIVE: Reimagining Moderation:The Miltonic Example 253 9. Paradise Lost ,Pleasurable Restraint, and the Mean of Self-Respect 255 Postscript: Sublime Excess, Dull Moderation, and Contemporary Ambivalence 285 Notes 289 Index 353
