Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English LiteratureThis book examines how English writers from the Elizabethan period to the Restoration transformed and contested the ancient ideal of the virtuous mean. As early modern authors learned at grammar school and university, Aristotle and other classical thinkers praised "golden means" balanced between extremes: courage, for example, as opposed to cowardice or recklessness. By uncovering the enormous variety of English responses to this ethical doctrine, Joshua Scodel revises our understanding of the vital interaction between classical thought and early modern literary culture. |
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... ENGLAND— HISTORY—16TH CENTURY. 4. LITERATURE AND SOCIETY—ENGLAND—HISTORY—17TH CENTURY. 5. DIDACTIC LITERATURE, ENGLISH—HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 6. ENGLISH LITERATURE—CLASSICAL INFLUENCES. 7. TEMPERANCE IN LITERATURE. 8. POLARITY IN ...
... , furthermore, these clashing treatments of means and extremes continue to resonate within contemporary cultural debates. The Classical Mean in Early Modern England The social and. qqqqqqqq. Introduction: Ancient Paradigms in Modern ...
Joshua Scodel. The Classical Mean in Early Modern England The social and intellectual elite of early modern England often espoused Aris- totle's definition, most fully developed in his Nicomachean Ethics, of ethical virtues as habits ...
... England support this general view. While religious controversy and national politics were continually intertwined during the pe- riod (and beyond), C. Johan Sommerville charts a powerful albeit uneven process of secularization in early ...
... England that punished nonconformity. The epis- tle to Wotton was probably written in 1597 or 1598, around the time Donne began his court career as secretary to Lord Keeper Egerton.2 Though the son of a rich merchant, Donne often ...
Contents
1 | |
19 | |
Means and Extremes in Early Modern Georgic | 77 |
Erotic Excess and Early Modern Social Conflicts | 143 |
Moderation and Excess in the SeventeenthCentury Symposiastic Lyric | 197 |
Reimagining Moderation The Miltonic Example | 253 |
Sublime Excess Dull Moderation and Contemporary Ambivalence | 285 |
Notes | 289 |
Index | 353 |