Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Modes and means of literary production, circulation and reception
- 2 The Tudor era from the Reformation to Elizabeth I
- 3 The era of Elizabeth and James VI
- 4 The earlier Stuart era
- 15 Literature and national identity
- 16 Literature and the court
- 17 Literature and the church
- 18 Literature and London
- 19 Literature and the theatre to 1660
- 20 Literature and the household
- 5 The Civil War and Commonwealth era
- Chronological outline of historical events and texts in Britain, 1528–1674, with list of selected manuscripts
- Select bibliography (primary and secondary sources)
- Index
- References
20 - Literature and the household
from 4 - The earlier Stuart era
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Modes and means of literary production, circulation and reception
- 2 The Tudor era from the Reformation to Elizabeth I
- 3 The era of Elizabeth and James VI
- 4 The earlier Stuart era
- 15 Literature and national identity
- 16 Literature and the court
- 17 Literature and the church
- 18 Literature and London
- 19 Literature and the theatre to 1660
- 20 Literature and the household
- 5 The Civil War and Commonwealth era
- Chronological outline of historical events and texts in Britain, 1528–1674, with list of selected manuscripts
- Select bibliography (primary and secondary sources)
- Index
- References
Summary
No doubt authors in every age have written poems and plays, stories and tracts in their studies or bedchambers. But in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, households of various kinds – from noble estates headed by literary patrons to the private dwellings of the ‘middling sort’–emerged as a prominent site of literary production for male as well as female authors, offering an alternative to the court or the church. In these years also, the activities, inhabitants and ideological underpinnings of such households form the subject matter of many kinds of literary and rhetorical texts, addressed to various audiences and serving both private and public purposes.
Ben Jonson’s ode ‘To Penshurst’ was published in his folio of 1616 but written before Prince Henry’s death on 6 November 1612. It celebrates the estate of Sir Robert Sidney, Viscount Lisle and later Earl of Leicester, younger brother of the deceased Sir Philip Sidney and of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, and himself author of a sonnet sequence, Rosis and Lysa. Jonson’s poem, in heroic couplets, presents Penshurst as an idealised noble household, a counterweight to the Jacobean court and to more recent ‘prodigy’ houses like Knole or Longleat, built for ostentatious display and to entertain the court in progress. Penshurst is a locus amoenus or delightful place with nature and human society in harmony and with pastoral otium happily associated with georgic cultivation. The woods are inhabited by nature gods and family memorials intimating permanence and stability, and on this quasi-Edenic estate fruit is ready to hand, fish leap willingly into nets, and game gladly offers itself to the lord’s table.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature , pp. 603 - 630Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
References
, Brief Lives, edited from the original manuscripts, ed. , London: Secker and Warburg, 1949. Rpt Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962.Google Scholar
, Donne’s Anniversaries and the Poetry of Praise: The Creation of a Symbolic Mode (Princeton University Press, 1973).Google Scholar
, , [, Viscountess,] (trans.) [,] The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II, King of England, and Lord of Ireland. With the Rise and Fall of His Great Favourites, Gaveston and the Spencers, London: J. C. for C. Harper, 1680.Google Scholar
, , [, Viscountess,] (trans.) [,] The Reply of the Most Illustrious Cardinal of Perron, to the Answeare of the Most Excellent King of Great Britaine. The First Tome, Douay: M. Bogart, 1630.Google Scholar
, , [, Viscountess,] (trans.) [,] The Tragedie of Mariam, the Faire Queene of Jewry, London: T. Creede for R. Hawkins, 1613. Mod. edn, The Tragedy of Mariam the Fair Queen of Jewry, with The Lady Falkland her Life, By one of her Daughters, ed. and , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.Google Scholar
, A Godlie Forme of Householde Government, for the Ordering of Private Families, According to the Direction of Gods Word, London: T. Creede for T. Man, 1598. 4th enlarged edn, subtitled First, gathered by R. C. And now newly perused, amended, and augmented, by J. Dod, and R. Clever, London: for T. Man and G. Norton, 1610. 8th edn, 1630.Google Scholar
, The King’s Majesty’s declaration to his subjects concerning lawful sports to be used (London, 1633)Google Scholar
, best-known work is The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (London, 1638).Google Scholar
, Lives of Lady Anne Clifford and of Her Parents, ed. (London: Roxburghe Club, 1916), p..Google Scholar
, Diaries, ed. , Stroud, Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1990; and Wolfeboro Falls, NH: Sutton, 1991.Google Scholar
, The Diary of Anne Clifford, 1616–1619. A Critical Edition, ed. , New York: Garland, 1995.Google Scholar
, Certaine Small Poems lately printed: With the tragedie of Philotas (London, 1605; rpt, 1607, 1611, 1613)Google Scholar
, The first fowre bookes of the civile Warres betweene the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke, London: for S. Waterson, 1595.Google Scholar
, The Civile Warres betweene the howeses of Lancaster and Yorke corrected and continued, Books 1–8, London: S. Waterson, 1609. Mod. edn, ed. , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958.Google Scholar
, A defence of ryme in A panegyrike congratulatory delivered to the Kings most excellent majesty…Also certaine epistles. With a defence of ryme, London: for E. Blount, 1603.Google Scholar
, Delia. Contayning certayne sonnets: with, The complaint of Rosamond, London: for , 1592. Mod. edns, in The Complete Works of Samuel Daniel in Verse and Prose, ed. , 5 vols., London: Russell & Russell, 1885, vol. 1; Poems and a Defence of Ryme, ed. .Google Scholar
, Poeticall Essayes … Newly corrected and augmented (includes ‘Musophilus’), London: for S. Waterson, 1599.Google Scholar
, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements, with a Methodicall Short Catechisme, London: T. C[reede] for T. Man, 1604. 19th edn, 1635.Google Scholar
, The Epithalamions, Anniversaries, and Epicedes, ed. , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Pseudo-Martyr. Wherein … this conclusion is evicted. That those of the Romane religion ought to take the oath of allegiance, London: for W. Burre, 1610. Mod. edn, ed. , Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
, Resolves, Divine, Morall, Politicall, London: [G. Purslowe] for H. Seile, 1623. 11th edn, 1696.Google Scholar
, Resolves, A Duple Century, one new, an other of a second edition, London: [G. Purslowe] for H. Seile, 1628. Facs. rpt, The English Experience, 734, Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1975.Google Scholar
, in A World of Wordes, or Most copious, and exact Dictionaries in Italian and English (London, 1598)Google Scholar
, Of Domesticall Duties: Eight Treatises, London: J. Haviland for W. Bladen, 1622. 3rd edn, 1626.Google Scholar
, , Certaine Learned and Elegant Workes of the Right Honorable Fulke Lord Brooke, London: E. P[urslowe] for H Seyle, 1633. Facs. edn, intro. , Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1990.Google Scholar
, The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599–1605, ed. , Stroud, Glos.: Sutton, 1998.Google Scholar
, The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, London: W. Stansby, 1616. The second [and third] volume, London: for R. Meighen [and T. Walkley], 1640.Google Scholar
, The Works of Ben Jonson, ed. , and , 11 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–52. Rpt, 1988.Google Scholar
[] , The Araignment of Lewde, idle, froward and unconstant women: Or the vanitie of them, choose you whether (London, 1615)Google Scholar
, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, London: V. Simmes for R. Bonian, 1611. Mod. edn, The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, ed. , Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
, The Mothers Blessing; or, the godly Counsaile of a Gentlewoman, not long since deceased, left behind her for her children, London: for J. Budge, 1616. 4th edn, [] for , 1618. 15th edn, for , 1630.Google Scholar
, Countess of, The Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie, ed. , Oxford: J. Lichfield and J. Short, 1622.Google Scholar
, Countrey contentments…The English Hus-wife, Contayning, the Inward and Outward Vertues which ought to be in a compleat Woman, London: J. B[eale] for R. Jackson, 1615. 2nd edn, 1623. 5th edn, 1633. 5th time augmented, 1637.Google Scholar
ed., Lady Mary Wroth’s Love’s Victory: The Penshurst Manuscript, (London: Roxburghe Club, 1988).Google Scholar
, Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996.Google Scholar
, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. et al., 8 vols., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953–82.Google Scholar
, A Maske: The Earlier Versions, ed. , Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1973.Google Scholar
, Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin, London: R. Raworth for H. Moseley, 1645.Google Scholar
, ‘My Name Was Martha’: A Renaissance Woman’s Autobiographical Poem, ed. and , West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1993.Google Scholar
, , Countess of, The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, ed. , and , Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
, , Countess of (trans.), A Discourse of life and death by Ph[ilippe de] Mornay. Antonius, a tragedie, written also in French by Ro[bert] Garnier. Both doone in English by the countesse of Pembroke, London: P. S[hort] for W. Ponsonby, 1592.Google Scholar
, Histrio-mastix. The players scourge, London: E. A[llde, A. Mathewes, T. Cotes] and W. J[ones] for M. Sparke, 1633.Google Scholar
, English Prose Fiction, 1558–1700: A Critical History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p.Google Scholar
, also wrote Microcosmos: The discovery of the little world, with government thereof (London, 1603, 1605, 1611)Google Scholar
, Mortalities Memorandum, with A Dreame Prefixed, imaginarie in manner; reall in matter, London: E. Griffin for J. Bloom, 1621.Google Scholar
, A Mouzell for Melastomus, the Cynicall Bayter of, and foule mouthed Barker against Evah’s Sex, London: N. Okes for T. Archer, 1617.Google Scholar
, Penshurst: The Semiotics of Place and the Poetics of History, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.Google Scholar
, ABride-Bush: or, Adirection for married persons, London: F. Kyngston for T. Man, 1619.Google Scholar
, Visionary Poetics: Milton’s Tradition and His Legacy, San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1979.Google Scholar
, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (The First Part), London: for J. Marriot and J. Grismand, 1621. Mod. edn, The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, ed. , Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995.Google Scholar
, The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, ed. , Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
, The Second Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (Newberry Library, Case MS fY 1565. W95), ed. , completed by and , Tempe, AZ: RETS and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999.Google Scholar
- 1
- Cited by