Description
Book SynopsisThe early Stuart funeral elegy was a copious and digressive genre, and exceptional deaths pressed elegists to stretch beyond the usual rhetoric of grief and commemoration. This book engages in a broad reading of the period’s rich trove of funeral elegies, in both manuscript and print, and by poets ranging from the canonical to the anonymous. The book stands apart from earlier studies by its greater focus upon the
subjects of funeral elegies (rather than the poets), and how the particular circumstances of death and the immediate contexts affected the poetic response. Individual deaths are understood in relation to each other and other prominent events of the time. While the book covers the period 1603 to 1640, the 1620s stand out as a tumultuous decade in which the genre most fully engaged in matters of political controversy and satire.
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1 Prince Henry
2 ‘A Prison is in all things like a Grave': elegies on Arbella Stuart, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Sir Walter Ralegh
3 Royal deaths
4 Military deaths of the 1620s
5 To ‘Silence Slanders toungue’: elegies on George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
6 A defence of suicide: William Douglas’ funeral elegy on the Second Earl of Lothian
7 Funeral elegies on elite women
8 From robe to winding sheet: funeral elegies on churchmen and scholars
9 Distracted into heresy
Afterword
Appendix: terminology, genres, and sub-genres
Select bibliography
Index
