The Subtext Of Form In The English Renaissance - Proportion Poetical

Heninger, S K

ISBN 10: 0271010711 / ISBN 13: 9780271010717

Published by Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994

About this Item

Paperback, F. x+214pp, 31 b/w illustrations, index, a nice fine copy. New. Study of the clash between the Medieval notion that an object had symbolic meaning and the Renaissance idea of materialism. The book looks at the change in ideas which occured with the Renaissance when a fundamental rethinking of what an object actually represents took place. The book explores the onological & epistemological issues which surround this shift in our cultural history. 450 grams.

Seller Inventory # 42852

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Subtext Of Form In The English Renaissance - Proportion Poetical
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271010711
• ISBN 13: 9780271010717
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st edition.
• Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Architecture
  • Renaissance History

About this title

Synopsis

During the sixteenth century in England the logocentrism of the Middle Ages was confronted by a materialism that heralded the modern world. With remarkable tenacity in music, poetry, and painting, the orthodox aesthetic persisted as formal features which served as nonverbal signs and provided a subtext of form. In opposition, however, a radical aesthetic emerged to accommodate the new attention to physical nature. The growing force of materialism occasioned a fundamental rethinking of what an artifact might represent and how that representation might be achieved. This book explores the ontological and epistemological issues that poststructuralist thought raises about that shift in our cultural history. In doing so, it charts a course for Renaissance studies, now in disarray, that avoids the old positivism while not succumbing to the new nihilism.

About the Author

S. K. Heninger, Jr., is University Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of North Carolina and author of, most recently, Sidney and Spenser: The Poet as Maker (Penn State, 1989).