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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... revealed both how widely accepted a norm it was and how malleable it had become. Both Royal- ists and Parliamentarians initially appealed to a “mixed” monarchy or properly “tempered” (though differently conceived) constitution that ...
... reveals his ambivalence concerning wine drinking as a source of cultured pleasure and poetic inspiration that is also potentially excessive. His Caroline disciples simplify his legacy in one respect by defiantly celebrating drunkenness ...
... reveals that Donne seeks not Stoic detachment but rather an efficacious and therefore morally justifiable expression of emotion. “Railing” recalls Juvenal's most fa- miliar stance, the angry abuse that stems from indignatio (Satire 1, l ...
... reveal as the proper stance. Yet they reason them- selves into opposite extremes. Phrygius is spiritually deficient in joining “none,” while Graccus is excessive in regarding “all” sects as valid.23 Donne deepens his attack, moreover ...
... reveals the self-de- feating nature of Phrygius's stance. Richard Strier has suggested that “care- lesse” evokes ataraxia or tranquility, the ancient philosophical ideal of being without care.25 Though Phrygius is too fearful actually ...
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 |