Reading Renaissance Ethics

by Marshall Grossman (Editor)

Overview

Bringing together some of the best current practitioners of historical and formal criticism, Reading Renaissance Ethics assesses the ethical performance of renaissance texts as historical agents in their time and in ours.

Exploring the nature and mechanics of cultural agency, the book explains with greater clarity just what is at stake when canon-formation, aesthetic evaluation and curricular reform are questioned and revised. Taking seriously the question of what to read requires us to consider exactly what it is that we do when we read and when we write about our reading. Reading Renaissance Ethics asks what'sorts of events took place when Renaissance texts were first read and how this differs from the way we read and teach them now.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415406345
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/26/2007
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements. Contributors. List of Illustrations. Part 1: 1. Introduction: Reading Renaissance Ethics Part 2: The Ethics of Renaissance Forms 2. Gender, Justice and the Gods in The Faerie Queene, Book 5 3. The Ethics of Posing: Visual Epideixis in Some 17^th Century Dutch Group Portraits 4. Textual Ethics: Reading Transference and Translation: Milton and Tragedy 5. Aesthetics as Critique in Samson Agonistes Part 3: Historicizing Renaissance Ethics 6. The Ethics of Renaissance Bible Translation 7. Eating Montaigne 8. Marvell’s 'Scaevola Scoto-Brittannus' and the Ethics of Political Violence Part 4: Philosophy and Renaissance Ethics 9. The Ethics of Inspiration 10. Shakespeare Against Morality 11. The Skeptical Ethics of John Donne: The Case of Ignatius his Conclave 12. Winning the Initiative Part 5: Assessments 13. Ethics or Politics? An Exchange Passing through the Areopagitica 14. Reading Reading Renaissance Ethics: 'with modesty enough'

Editorial Reviews

"Grossman assembles an extremely diverse collection of short essays on this theme by highly reputed Renaissance scholars..." — Catherine Gimelli Martin, Studies in English Literature, Winter 2008

'... essential reading... The book draws together a fascinating set of essays written by an extremely influential group of scholars, and focuses attention on some powerful problems in contemporary literary and cultural studies. The fact that it offers some very different takes on those problems only increases its interest.' - Benedict S. Robinson, State University of New York

From the Publisher