Echoes of Desire

Heather Dubrow is Professor and Rev. John Boyd, SJ Chair of English at Fordham University. She is the author of The Challenges of Orpheus: Lyric Poetry and Early Modern England, Genre, and the book of poetry Forms and Hollows.

Dubrow's attempt to renegotiate a definition of Petrarchism and its counterdiscourses ultimately succeeds because she insists on the value of traditional literary formalism, including attention to epigram and the treatment of literary genres as 'metaphors for perspectives and attitudes. Her sensitive and nuanced close readings of verse reveal quite specifically how diacritical desire functions within these poems and how these poems, in turn, participate in a critical dialogue. This thoughtful and thought- provoking book deserves our attention.- Jeffrey N. Nelson (Sixteenth Century Journal) This book is packed with research and revelations about the Renaissance lyric tradition, set forth in a consummate critical style.(Clio)