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Squitter-wits
and Muse-haters
Sidney, Spenser, Milton and Renaissance Antipoetic
Sentiment
Peter C. Herman |
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Few
critics have taken seriously the "war against poetry" that percolated
throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Of those critics, most assume that
poetry's lack of utility, its insignificance, serves as the debate's central
issue. In fact, poetry posed a much greater political, religious, and sexual
threat than earlier treatments have allowed.
Squitter-wits and Muse-haters offers a fresh
approach toward Renaissance literary production, demonstrating that antipoetic
sentiment constituted a significant "shaping presence" in Sidney,
Spenser, and Milton. Peter Herman begins his provocative study with an examination
of the appropriation of antipoetic sentiment by the earliest English Protestants,
especially William Tyndale and John Frith. Through a careful analysis of
key texts, Herman shows how Sidney, Spenser and Milton attempted to confront
the deeply ingrained hostility toward poetry. |
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Introduction:
The Problem of Poetry
1. The Antipoetics of Protestantism
2. When Is a Defense Not a Defense? Sidneys' Paradoxical
Apology for Poetry
3. Astrophil and
Stella: Poetry, Politics, and Masculinity
4. "See the Boy with the Stagefright": Spenser's
The Shepherdes Calender
and the Problematics of Ambition
5. "To Forge True-Seeming Lyes": Bon and
Mal Poetry in The Faerie Queene
6. "Advent'rous Song": Milton's Early Poetry
and the Muse-haters
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