Description
Book SynopsisFocuses on the literary implications of 17th-century religion, Shakespeare's Roman plays, and 16th-century poetry. Renaissance Papers collects the best essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. In the 2007 volume, two essays focus on Shakespeare's Roman plays: one on Lavinia's death and Roman suicide in Titus Andronicus, the other on the rhetorical construction of masculinity in Julius Caesar. Five essays address the literary implications of seventeenth-century religious belief and practice, considering the influence of the timing and delivery of sermons on John Donne, the impact of godly reforms on Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, the effect of Scottish on English Presbyterianism during the 1640s, the critique of reformist utopianism in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, and the implications of Paradise Lost's lack of a frontispiece. Two essays on sixteenth-century poetry look at the literary voices of commoners and of kings: one focuses on the portraits of women and commoners in A Mirror for Magistrates, while the other examines the political implications of King James VI/I's metrical translations of David's Psalms. Contributors: Reid Barbour, Nora L. Corrigan, William A. Coulter, Julie Fann, Robert Kilgore, Sonya Freeman Loftis, Christopher Hair, Jim Pearce, and John N. Wall.
Table of ContentsJohn Donne and the Practice of Priesthood - John N. Wall Charity, Halifax, and Utopia: The Disadvantageous Setting of Thomas Browne's Religio Medici - Reid Barbour Presbyterian Church and State Before The Solemn League and Covenant - Julie Fann The Flaw in Paradise: The Critique of Idealism in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World - Christopher Hair "Conceited portraiture before his Book ... to catch fools and silly gazers" :Some Reflections on Paradise Lost and the Tradition of the Engraved Frontispiece Engraved Frontispiece - William A. Coulter "But Smythes Must Speake": Women's and Commoner's Voices in the Mirror for Magistrates - Nora L. Corrigan Fit for a King: The Manuscript Poems of King James VI/I - Robert Kilgore The Suicide of Lavinia: Finding Rome in Titus Andronicus - Sonya Freeman Loftis The Language of the Gods: Rhetoric and the Construction of Masculinity in Julius Caeser - Jim Pearce
