Description

sehr guter Zustand / very good condition - Although the literary circle is widely recognized as a significant feature of Renaissance literary culture, it has received remarkably little examination. In this collection of essays, the authors attempt to explain literary circles and cultural communities in Renaissance England, including both actual and fictive communities such as the Overbury circle, the Donne coterie, Jonson and the Sons of Ben, the Cavendish or Newcastle network, the Stanley circle, and the Great Tew alliance. The volume explores the varied ways in which they were conceived and the diverse needs they fulfilled. While the emphasis is primarily on particular circles, attention is also paid to larger theoretical issues relating to literary circles and to the broader and more general concept of cultural communities. -- The essayists raise important questions about the extent to which literary circles are themselves actual constructs or fictional creations, about how the concept of a literary circle may be illuminating or limiting, and about how the circle metaphor itself can be extended or reformulated. Some of the contributors discuss how particular circles actually operated, some attempt to illustrate the varied effects of specific networks on individual writers, and others question the very concept of the literary circle. Main points of interest for the authors range from the illumination of particular communities to how aspects of literary circles can elucidate specific works or the entire literary system. - Demonstrating how careful scrutiny of literary circles - in their many and varied forms - greatly enriches our understanding and appreciation of early modern literature, Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England is an important addition to seventeenth-century studies. ISBN 9780826213174