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. |
From inside the book
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... argues that because the mean is greater than vicious deficiency and less than vicious excess, a brave man appears reck- less to a coward and appears cowardly to a reckless one. Furthermore, since one extreme is closer to the mean than ...
... argue, early modern authors treat the mean-extremes contrast in even more diverse and contradictory ways. Working in a ... argues that the modern period, broadly defined, witnesses an increasing move from sociopolit- ical stratification ...
... argues that religious faith did not decline; rather, the period witnessed a “growing differentiation of religious symbols and institutions” from other areas of English society and culture. Susan Amussen similarly explores the ...
... argues, genres may “partly resist period incorporation” and allow authors room to express visions beyond “immediate social con- texts.”47 The appropriation of genres from other places and other times, even when the author deviates from ...
... argues that proper scientific practice, seek- ing to transform the human condition by conquering nature, is fueled by a charitable extremism far superior to Aristotelian moderation. Bacon's flexible espousal of both means and extremes ...
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 |