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Examining both familiar and underappreciated texts, Hassan Melehy foregrounds the relationships that early modern French and English writers conceived with both their classical predecessors and authors from flourishing literary traditions in neighboring countries. In order to present their own avowedly national literatures as successfully surpassing others, they engaged in a paradoxical strategy of presenting other traditions as both inspiring and dead. Each of the book's four sections focuses on one early modern author: Joachim Du Bellay, Edmund Spenser, Michel de Montaigne, and William Shakespeare. Melehy details the elaborate strategies that each author uses to rewrite and overcome the work of predecessors. His book touches on issues highly pertinent to current early modern studies: among these are translation, the relationship between classicism and writing in the vernacular, the role of literature in the consolidation of the state, attitudes toward colonial expansion and the "New World," and definitions of modernity and the past.
Text in English with some contributions in French.
This collection of essays by thirteen renowned specialists in the fields of French Renaissance literature and history is a fitting tribute to the scholarship of Pauline Smith, Emeritus Professor in French at the University of Hull and Research Associate of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. The essays, which focus on areas of research to which Professor Smith has herself given - and continues to give - particular attention, are organised into two frequently converging strands: court and humour. The contributors engage with political and cultural issues at the heart of the construction and aesthetic expression of the French Renaissance, whilst also offering insights into the broader European context. The collection as a whole challenges and revises a number of established views and identifies paths for future research.
Starting from Justus Lipsius's Monita et exempla politica (1605), this book offers a collection of essays dealing with the disputed Macchiavellian, Tacitean or Neostoic character of Lipsius's political thought, and its impact on the dynamics of political discourse in Early Modern Europe.
No cultural phenomenon can remain vital and evolve without a continuous integration of external elements. Instead of reading the process of appropriation in terms of sources or models , the dynamics involved are better understood using more flexible categories such as creative reception, polyphony and dialogue. In every phase of its evolution, in Antiquity, the Middle Ages or (Early) Modern times, Latin literature had to face a double challenge, one from the past, and one from the present: although the models and heritage of the past always remained normative, contemporary demands had to be met too. The contributions in this volume analyze different moments of intercultural negotiation within the long history of Latin Literature.
Offers an alternative account of Shakespeare's blank verse (his unrhymed iambic pentameter) and provides a new history of the first blank verse in English and of Shakespeare's involvement in its development.
Italy's original fascination with its cultural origins in Greece and Rome first created what is now known as 'the Classical tradition' - the pervasive influence of ancient art and thought on later times. In response to a growing interest in Classical reception, this volume provides a timely reappraisal of the Greek and Roman legacies in Italian literary history. There are fresh insights on the early study of Greek and Latin texts in post-classical Italy and reassessments of the significance attached to ancient authors and ideas in the Renaissance, as well as some innovative interpretations of canonical Italian authors, including Dante, Petrarch and Alberti, in the light of their ancient infl...
No cultural phenomenon can remain vital and evolve without a continuous integration of external elements. Instead of reading the process of appropriation in terms of ‘sources’ or ‘models’, the dynamics involved are better understood using more flexible categories such as creative reception, polyphony and dialogue. In every phase of its evolution, in Antiquity, the Middle Ages or (Early) Modern times, Latin literature had to face a double challenge, one from the past, and one from the present: although the models and heritage of the past always remained normative, contemporary demands had to be met too. The contributions in this volume analyze different moments of intercultural negotiation within the long history of Latin Literature.
'Epic Arts in Renaissance France' examines the relationship between art and literature in 16th-century France, and considers how the epic genre became 'public' via realisations in various other art forms.