Solitude and Speechlessness

Andrew Mattison teaches in the English Department at the University of Toledo.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Writing in Solitude1. Lyric Futures: Hidden Ambitions in the Sidney-Pembroke Circle2. Nameless Orphans: Ambitious Poetry in an Age of Modesty3. The Peril of Understanding: Forms of Obscurity4. The Lure of Solitude: Melancholy and Eremitism as Literary Dispositions5. The Naked Sense of Retirement: Cowley, Marvell, Traherne6. Literary History in Isolation: Bacon, Hofmannsthal, and Historical MemoryConclusion: Reading in SolitudeBibliography

"Solitude and Speechlessness is a book that scholars of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetry will appreciate for its detailed, precise, and accurate analysis of canonical works. It provides a re-reading of such works through a peculiar lens: the pursuit, or fear, of the sense of isolation that allows us to find, but also lose, ourselves."- Elena Brizio, Georgetown University (Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme) "In his remarkable study, Andrew Mattison offers a fascinating examination of the various and self-conscious forms of literary withdrawal within sixteenth and seventeenth-century English writings, and of the implications that such a poetics of isolation have for the writing of literary history."- Joshua Easterling, Murray State University (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching) "In our current global experience of isolation, Mattison’s book has special resonance. Among many achievements, it reminds us of the virtue of being ambitious readers, challenging ourselves to wander from familiar paths."- Anna Welch, State Library Victoria (Parergon)