Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry

Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry combines close readings of individual poems with a critical consideration of the historical context in which they were written. Informative and original, this book has been carefully designed to enable readers to understand, enjoy, and be inspired by sixteenth-century poetry.

• Close reading of a wide variety of sixteenth-century poems, canonical and non-canonical, by men and by women, from print and manuscript culture, across the major literary modes and genres
• Poems read within their historical context, with reference to five major cultural revolutions: Renaissance humanism, the Reformation, the modern nation-state, companionate marriage, and the scientific revolution
• Offers in-depth discussion of Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, Isabella Whitney, Gascoigne, Philip Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Mary Sidney Herbert, Donne, and Shakespeare
• Presents a separate study of all five of Shakespeare’s major poems - Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, 'The Phoenix and Turtle,' the Sonnets, and A Lover's Complaint- in the context of his dramatic career
• Discusses major works of literary criticism by Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Philip Sidney, George Puttenham, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Seamus Heaney, Adrienne Rich, and Helen Vendler

Content:
Chapter 1 Voice The Poetic Style of Character (pages 19–42):
Chapter 2 Perception The Crisis of the Reformation, or, What the Poet Sees (pages 43–65):
Chapter 3 World The Poet's Ecology of Place (pages 66–89):
Chapter 4 Form The Idea of a Poem (pages 90–114):
Chapter 5 Career The Role of the Poet in Society (pages 115–138):
Chapter 6 Voice The Poetic Style of Character (pages 141–162):
Chapter 7 Perception What the Poet Sees, and the Advent of Modern Personage (pages 163–184):
Chapter 8 World The Poet's Ecology of Place (pages 185–207):
Chapter 9 Form Fictions of Poetic Kind (pages 208–230):
Chapter 10 Career The Role of the Poet in Society (pages 231–253):
Chapter 11 Shakespeare (pages 257–279):