The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics

Etukansi
Yale University Press, 1.1.1996 - 406 sivua
Written around 1580, Philip Sidney's Arcadia is a romance, a love story, a work of wit and enchantment set in an ancient and mythical land. But, as Blair Worden now startlingly reveals, it is also a grave and urgent commentary on Elizabethan politics. Under the protective guise of pastoral fiction, Sidney produced a searching reflection on the misgovernment of Elizabeth I and on the failings of monarchy as a system of government. Blair Worden reconstructs the dramatic events amidst which the Arcadia was composed and shows for the first time how profound is their presence in it. The Queen's failure to resist the Catholic advance at home and abroad, and her apparent resolve to marry the Catholic heir to the French throne, seemed likely to bring tyranny and persecution to England. Her policies provoked a radical political dissent which historians and literary critics have missed, and of which the Arcadia is the most penetrating and eloquent expression. The Sound of Virtue combines, in a manner and on a scale never before attempted, the close analysis of a literary text with the scholarly reconstruction of its historical context. It transforms our understanding of Sidney's masterpiece and offers a new approach to the relationship between the history and literature of the Renaissance.

Kirjan sisältä

Sisältö

Teaching and Delight
3
Virtue and Religion
23
Sidneys Loyalties
41
An Unelected Vocation
58
A Losing Cause
71
Three Crises of Counsel
127
The Death of Basilius
184
Forms of Government
227
Falling in Love
297
Public and Private Respects
320
Causeless Yieldings
341
Greville Sidney and the Two Arcadias
355
Sir John Hayward and the Old Arcadia
370
Tekijänoikeudet

Muita painoksia - Näytä kaikki

Yleiset termit ja lausekkeet

Tietoja kirjailijasta (1996)

Blair Worden is professor of early modern history at the University of Sussex.

Kirjaluettelon tiedot