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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... ENGLISH LITERATURE / JOSHUA SCODEL P. CM. (LITERATURE IN HISTORY SERIES) INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX. ISBN 0-691-09028-9 (ACID-FREE PAPER) 1. ENGLISH LITERATURE—EARLY MODERN, 1500–1700—HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 2 ...
... English literary representations of means and extremes from the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth century. Classical in origin, the notion of a virtuous mean between two vicious extremes figured crucially in the writings of ...
... English thought.5 Yet English authors frequently pre- ferred Aristotelian “mediocrity” to the Stoic ideal of wholly extirpating the emotions. Mixing Aristotelianism with Augustine's famous critique of Sto- icism (De civitate dei 9.5 ...
... English Protestants found in the church fathers purer assurance of the mean's compati- bility with Christian faith.9 Early modern English authors of different religious, political, and social commitments and backgrounds often espouse ...
... English espousals of the via media concealed numerous disagreements con- cerning the formula's precise meaning. Members of the national church dis- agreed as to what constituted the “extreme” Protestantism ranged on the other side of ...
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 |