Davis, Nick. Early modern writing and the privatization of experience

Folger bibliographic ID: 338106
Folger call number: PR428.P68 D38 2013
Folger holdings ID: 490809

"Reading a wide range of Early Modern authors and exploring their political, philosophical and scientific contexts, this book charts the movement away from reliance on collective experience, and the construction of the individual as the locus of authentic perception, thought and feeling, which occurs between the fourteenth and early eighteenth centuries. According to Nick Davis, much English writing of the period takes part in this development, examining it, resisting it, and advancing it in several forms. Among the writers discussed are Chaucer, Langland, Thomas More, Spenser, Nashe, Jonson, Middleton, the Shakespeare of the Henry IV - Henry V plays and The Winter's Tale, Hobbes, Bunyan, Defoe and Pope. From there, the book goes on to explore the legacy of Early Modern writing in our contemporary constructions of private experience"--

General notes

Includes bibliographical references and index

Contents

Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction: Reflections on the Common -- Medieval Writers, Modern Theorists \ 1. Collectivism in Renaissance Culture -- More, Nashe and others \ 2. Individualism and the Common in The Faerie Queene \ 3. Shakespeare and the Popular \ 4. The City as Commune -- Jonson, Defoe, Pope and others \ 5. Hobbes, Bunyan and the Resymbolisiation of Individual Experience \ 6. Retrospect -- Shakespeare Reinvents Allegory \ Bibliography \ Index

Extended title: Early modern writing and the privatization of experience / Nick Davis

English literature Privacy in literature Individualism in literature LITERARY CRITICISM / General

author: Davis, Nick (Nicholas Mark)