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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... rejecting Aristotle's notion of ethical virtue as a “mediocrity.” Hobbes replaced the Aristotelian concept with his own supposedly more accurate iden- tification of virtue with behavior that contributed to peaceful order, which in turn ...
... rejection of opposed Christian churches. Eschewing both the celebration of courtly splendor and the reaction which ... Rejecting the Aristotelian tradition as moribund, Bacon claims various kinds of extremism as essential for human ...
... Rejecting many of his contemporaries' use of the mean to justify prevailing religious and sociopolitical formations, he ... rejection of any of the rival Christian denominations. Clergymen, country gentlemen, and urban panegyrists ...
... rejection of cultural norms provides a compelling case of an early modern figure's self-conscious attempt to articulate an intermediate position with his own literary and philosophical tools. Reimagining the Mean of Courage “Satire 3 ...
... rejection of laughter and weeping sounds Stoic. Seneca argues that the wise man should “calmly” accept human faults without either laughing or weeping because he should not trouble himself with others' misfortunes (De tranquillitate ...
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 |