Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil

Description

In this wide-ranging and original study, Margaret Tudeau-Clayton examines how Virgil - the poet as well as his texts - was mediated in early modern England. She analyses what was at stake in the reproduction of these mediations of Virgil, focusing specifically on the works of Ben Jonson and on one of Shakespeare's most resonantly Virgilian plays, The Tempest. She argues that the play offers a complex model of cultural and sociopolitical resistance by engaging critically not only with contemporary mediations of Virgil, but with the ways they were used, especially by Jonson, to reproduce structures of authority (in relation to nature and language as well as to the sociopolitical order). She also shows how instructive comparisons may be drawn between the ways Virgil was constructed and used in early modern England and the ways Shakespeare has been constructed and used, especially as national poet, from the early modern period until our own time.

"Brilliant, learned, and exacting, the Tudeau-Clayton volume sets a new standard for its subjects." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 "This study undertakes an extensive project: to survey the significance and function. within the literary culture of Renaissance England, of classical Rome's most influential poet. Inevitably, this task also forces Tudeau-Clayton to come to grips with the two most influential poets of Renaissance England itself. And likewise, while examining...subsidary matters, such as...the function of classical learning as a marker of social difference in the Renaissance. Drawing on an impressive fund...Tudeau-Clayton addresses...diverse matters in the space of 250 pages...exceptionally dense piece of work." Bruce Boehrer, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, January 2000 ..."no reader can fail to value the scholarly findings that underlie Tudeau-Clayton's reading of Shakespeare." Modern Philosophy vol98/4