Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry

Patrick Cheney is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Penn State University. He is the author of books on Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Spenser, most recently Shakespeare’s Literary Authorship (2008) and Marlowe’s Republican Authorship: Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime (2009). He has also edited Cambridge Companions to Marlowe and Shakespeare’s Poetry, co-edited Oxford Companions to early modern English poetry and drama, and co-edited an Oxford edition of Marlowe’s poems. Currently, he serves as a General Editor of The Oxford Edition of the Collected Works of Edmund Spenser.

• Introduction 1The Pleasures and Uses of Sixteenth-Century Poetry Part I 1500–1558. Reading Early Tudor Poetry: Henrician, Edwardian, Marian 191 Voice 21The Poetic Style of Character: Plain and Eloquent Speaking 2 Perception 43The Crisis of the Reformation, or, What the Poet Sees: Self, Beloved, God 3 World 66The Poet’s Ecology of Place: Sky, Sea, Soil 4 Form 90The Idea of a Poem: Elegy, Pastoral, Sonnet, Satire, Epic 5 Career 115The Role of the Poet in Society: Skelton, Wyatt, and Surrey Part II 1558–1600. Reading Elizabethan Poetry 1396 Voice 141The Poetic Style of Character: From Plain Eloquence to the Metaphysical Sublime7 Perception 163What the Poet Sees, and the Advent of Modern Personage: Desire, Idolatry, Transport, Partnership8 World 185The Poet’s Ecology of Place: Cosmos, Colony, Country 9 Form 208Fictions of Poetic Kind: Pastoral, Sonnet, Epic, Minor Epic, Hymn10 Career 231The Role of the Poet in Society: Whitney, Spenser, and MarlowePart III A Special Case 25511 Shakespeare: Voice, Perception, World, Form, Career 257Conclusion 280Retrospective Poetry: Donne and the End of Sixteenth-Century Poetry Bibliography 288Index 323

“Highly useful in addressing the formal and generic concerns of sixteenth-century poets, and thus in demonstrating close reading, Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry fails to address the equally important political and theoretical period discourses or the methodologies needed to address them. The unbalanced infatuation with authorial vocation and authorial perspectives thus limits the usefulness of the text. Cheney’s companion text may thus represent a more widespread return to traditional author-centered interpretive theories and aturn away from poststructural approaches.”  (Journal of the Northern Renaissance, 1 December 2012)"Cheney's eye for such intertextual allusion transforms what could have been a series of isolated close readings into a delicately unified exposition of a century's worth of literary dialogue." (Times Literary Supplement, 23 December 2011) "A carefully selected bibliography that focuses on background sources as well as on primary works and significant critical material is a valuable supplement to the author's consideration of the poetry. Cheney develops his thesis clearly and makes an important contribution to Renaissance scholarship. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." (Choice, 1 October 2011)