The Performance of Nobility in Early Modern European Literature: 33 (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, Series Number 33) - Hardcover

David M. Posner

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521661811 ISBN 13: 9780521661812

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1999

Synopsis

This valuable study illuminates the idea of nobility as display, as public performance, in Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature and society. Ranging widely from Castiglione and French courtesy manuals, through Montaigne and Bacon, to the literature of the Grand Siècle, David Posner examines the structures of public identity in the period. He focuses on the developing tensions between, on the one hand, literary or imaginative representations of 'nobility' and, on the other, the increasingly problematic historical position of the nobility themselves. These tensions produce a transformation in the notion of the noble self as a performance, and eventually doom court society and its theatrical mode of self-presentation. Situated at the intersection of rhetorical and historical theories of interpretation, this book contributes significantly to our understanding of the role of literature both in analysing and in shaping social identity.

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Review

"An excellent resource for graduate students, research faculty, and social and literary historians." Choice

Book Description

This valuable study illuminates the idea of nobility as display, as public performance, in Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature and society. Through detailed readings of major authors, David Posner examines the tensions between literary or imaginative representations of 'nobility', and the increasingly problematic historical position of the noble classes themselves.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521661811
• ISBN 13: 9780521661812
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 286