Du Bartas Legacy In England And Scotland

Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas was the most popular and widely-imitated poet in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England and Scotland. C. S. Lewis felt that a reconsideration of his works' British reception was 'long overdue' back in the 1950s, and this study finally provides the first comprehensive account of how English-speaking authors read, translated, imitated, and eventually discarded Du Bartas' model for Protestant poetry. The first part shows that Du Bartas' friendship with James VI and I was key to his later popularity. Du Bartas' poetry symbolized a transnational Protestant literary culture in Huguenot France and Britain. Through James' intervention, Scottish literary tastes had a significant impact in England. Later chapters assess how Sidney, Spenser, Milton, and many other poets justified writing poetic fictions in reaction to Du Bartas' austere emphasis on scriptural truth. These chapters give equal attention to how Du Bartas' example offered a route into original verse composition for male and female poets across the literate population. Du Bartas' Legacy in England and Scotland responds to recent developments in transnational and translation studies, the history of reading, women's writing, religious literature, and manuscript studies. It argues that Du Bartas' legacy deserves far greater prominence than it has previously received because it offers a richer, more democratic, and more accurate view of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English, Scottish, and French literature and religious culture.

Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas was the most popular and widely-imitated poet in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England and Scotland. C.S. Lewis felt that a reconsideration of his works' British reception was 'long overdue' back in the 1950s, and this study finally provides the first comprehensive account of how English-speaking poets read, translated, imitated, and eventually discarded Du Bartas' model for Protestant poetry. The first part shows that Du Bartas' friendship with James VI and I was a key factor in his popularity. Through James's intervention, Du Bartas' poetry symbolized a transnational Protestant literary culture in Huguenot France and Britain, and meant that Scottish literary tastes had a significant impact in England. Later chapters assess how Sidney, Spenser, Milton and many other poets justified writing poetic fictions in reaction to Du Bartas' austere emphasis on scriptural truth. Crucially, Du Bartas' example is essential for understanding the everyday creative activities of many men and women who wrote poetry away from centres of power. 0Du Bartas' Legacy in England and Scotland responds to recent developments in transnational and translation studies, the history of reading, women's writing, religious literature, and manuscript and print studies. It argues that Du Bartas' legacy deserves greater prominence because it offers a more accurate, diverse, and representative view of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English, Scottish, and French literature and religious culture.

The French poets Ronsard and Du Bartas enjoyed a wide but varied reception throughout early modern Europe. This volume is the first book length monograph to study the transnational reception histories of both poets in conjunction with each other.

By drawing upon recent scholarship, original manuscript materials, and previously unpublished sources, this new biography presents an analytical narrative of King James VI & I’s life from his birth in 1566 to his accession to the throne of England and Ireland in 1603. The only son of Mary Stuart and heir (apparent but not uncontested) to Elizabeth I, James VI of Scotland was, from the moment of his birth, a focal point of countervailing hopes and fears for the confessional and dynastic future of the kingdoms of the British Isles. This study examines material from across the UK and beyond, as well as the newly deciphered letters of Mary, Queen of Scots, to reveal James as a highly capable, resourceful, deeply provocative and ruthless political actor. Analysis of James’s own writings is integrated within the narrative, providing fresh insights into the king’s inventive tactical engagement in the politics of publicity. Through a chronological approach, the events of his life are linked to wider issues associated with the early modern court, government, religion, and political and ideological conflict. James VI, Britannic Prince is of interest to all scholars of Scottish and British history in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Thomas Owens explores exultant visions inspired by Wordsworth's and Coleridge's scrutiny of the night sky, the natural world, and the domains of science. He examines a set of scientific patterns which the poets used to express ideas about poetry, religion, criticism, and philosophy, and sets out the importance of analogy in their creative thinking.

In 1730 Stephen Duck became the most famous agricultural labourer in the Hanoverian England when his writing won him the patronage of Queen Caroline. Duck and his writing intrigued his contemporaries. How was it possible for an agricultural labourer to become a poet? What would a thresher write? Did he really deserve royal patronage, and what would he do with such an honour? How should he be supported? And was he an isolated prodigy, or were there others like him, equally deserving of support? Duck's remarkable story reveals the tolerances, and intolerances, of the Hanoverian social order. Class, Patronage, and Poetry in Hanoverian England: Stephen Duck, The Famous Threshing Poet explores these complex and contested relationships through Duck's life and work. It sheds new light on the poet's early life, revealing how the farm labourer developed an interest in poetry; how he wrote his most famous poem, 'The Thresher's Labour'; how his public identity as the 'famous Threshing Poet' took shape; and how he came to be positioned as a figurehead of labouring-class writing. It explores how the patronage Duck received shaped his writing; how he came to reconceive his relationship with land, labour, and leisure; and how he made use of his newly acquired classical learning to develop new friendships and career opportunities. Finally, it reveals how, after Duck's death, rumours about his suicide came to overshadow the achievements of his life. Both in life, and in death, this book argues, Duck provided both opportunity and provocation for thinking through the complex interplay of class, patronage, and poetry in Hanoverian England.

'Anti-illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?' (J.M. Coetzee) Patrick Hayes argues that the significance of Coetzees fiction lies in the acuity with which it both explores and develops the tradition of the novelranging from Cervantes, Defoe, and Richardson to Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Beckettas part of a sustained attempt to rethink the relationship between writing and politics. For Coetzee, questions about the future of the novel are closely related to what it means to write after Beckett, and J. M. Coetzee and the Novel examines the ways in which his fiction discerningly assimilates the techniques of literary modernism to engage with some of the most troubling aspects of late twentieth-century cultural and political life. While Coetzee is rightly known as an intensely serious writer, Hayes shows that the true seriousness of his writing is intimately bound up with comedyor, to use the word Coetzee borrows from Joyce, the jocoserious. Opening up a range of new approaches to this major contemporary author, J. M. Coetzee and the Novel argues that it is only by paying especially close attention to the experience of reading Coetzees finely-nuanced prose that his distinctive impact on longstanding questions about identity, community, and the nature of political modernity can be appreciated.