Writing under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation

by Greg Walker

Overview

Writing Under Tyranny spans the boundaries between literary studies and history. It looks at the impact of tyrannical government on the work of poets, playwrights, and prose writers of the early English Renaissance. It shows the profound effects that political oppression had on the literary production of the years from 1528 to 1547, and how English writers in turn strove to mitigate, redirect, and finally resist that oppression. The result was the destruction of a number of forms that had dominated the literary production of late-medieval England, but also the creation of new forms that were to dominate the writing of the following centuries. Paradoxically, the tyranny of Henry VIII gave birth to many modes of writing now seen to be characteristic of the English literary Renaissance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199283330
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/22/2005
Pages:	568
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Greg Walker is Professor of Early-Modern Literature and Culture and Director of the Medieval Research Centre at the University of Leicester.

Table of Contents

1. The Long Divorce of Steel: Tyranny and Political Culture in Henry VIII's EnglandPoetry and the Culture of Counsel: The 1532 Workes of Geffray Chaucer and John Heywood's Play of the Wether2. A Gift for Henry VIII3. The Signs of the World: The 'Wondrous' Divisions of the early 1530s4. Reading Chaucer in 15325. Thynne and Tuke's Apocrypha6. Mocking the Thunder: Henry VIII, Jupiter, and John Heywood's Play of the Wether'To Virtue Persuaded'?: The Persistent Counsels of Sir Thomas Elyot7. Sir Thomas Elyot and the King's Great Matter8. The Boke Named the Governor: Good Kingship and the Royal Supremacy9. Tyranny and the Conscience of Man: Elyot's Dialogues, 1533-3410. From Supremacy to Tyranny11. The Apotheosis of Sir Thomas ElyotThe Death of Counsel: Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey12. Sir Thomas Wyatt: Poetry and Politics13. Tyranny Condemned: Wyatt's Epistolary Satires14. Wyatt's Embassy, Treason, and 'The Defence'15. Pleading With Power: Wyatt's Penitential Psalms16. 'Wyatt Resteth Here': Henry Howard and the Invention of Resistance17. Writing under Tyranny: Wyatt, Surrey, and the Reinvention of English Poetry