Guilty Creatures: Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorship - Softcover

Kezar, Dennis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195397940 ISBN 13: 9780195397949

Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A., 2011

Synopsis

This study examines how Renaissance poets conceive the theme of killing as a specifically representational and interpretive form of violence. Closely reading both major poets and lesser known authors, Dennis Kezar explores the ethical self-consciousness and accountability that attend literary killing, paying particular attention to the ways in which this reflection indicates the poet's understanding of his audience. Kezar explores the concept of authorial guilt elicited by violent representation in poems including Skelton's Phyllyp Sparowe, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the multi-authored Witch of Edmonton, and Milton's Samson Agonistes. In each case, he reflects on the poetic process and explores the ethical ramifications for both author and audience. In emphasizing the social, literary, and historical consequences of 'killing poems,' this volume further advances scholarship in historicist and speech-act theories of the early modern period.

About this title

Product Description:

Unusual book

Review:

Suggests that Renaissance artists were often conscious of the potentially destructive powerof art, and that this self-consciousness shapes their work and understanding of their own social roles as artists. This attention to the 'responsibility for the other' provides us with a new understanding that brings us closer in sensibility to the early modern period than we have been in recent years. (Shakespeare Quarterly)

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A.
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0195397940
• ISBN 13: 9780195397949
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280