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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... distinguishing the mean from the extremes (ceremonial prac- tice? ecclesiastical structure? dogma?). The fluidity of the concept helps ex- plain how the English church could be hailed by so many of its members as the via media from the ...
... distinguishing a “Well temper'd Zeale,” the virtuous mean, from the deficient extreme of “Lukewarmnesse” with which it was falsely identified by the overzealous.28 Similar contestations and reassertions of the virtuous mean emerged in ...
... distinguishes between praiseworthy excess in love and moderation in other domains of life: lovers' norms diverge from those of political subjects or economic agents. Georgic poets sometimes use contrasting or even contradictory ...
... distinguish the highborn lover from social inferiors, whose con- cern for “mediocrity” reflected a paltry investment in a “mean”—contemptible as well as middle—estate. Focusing on Davenant's Gondibert (1651) and works of John Dryden and ...
... between elite and popular modes of indulgence; and between diverse religious positions both within and outside the English church. As chapter 7 details, English poets often distinguish refined drinkers ANCIENT PARADIGMS, MODERN CONFLICTS ...
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 |