The English Wits

Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-0-521-15376-8
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 244 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 402 g

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Inns of Court and fashionable London taverns developed a culture of clubbing, urban sociability and wit. The convivial societies that emerged created rituals to define social identities and to engage in literary play and political discussion. Michelle O'Callaghan argues that the lawyer-wits, including John Hoskyns, in company with authors such as John Donne, Ben Jonson and Thomas Coryate, consciously reinvigorated humanist traditions of learned play. Their experiments with burlesque, banquet literature, parody and satire resulted in a volatile yet creative dialogue between civility and licence, and between pleasure and the violence of scurrilous words. The wits inaugurated a mode of literary fellowship that shaped the history and literature of sociability in the seventeenth century. This study will provide many insights for historians and literary scholars of the period.

Autoren/Hrsg.

O'Callaghan, Michelle

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontispiece; Acknowledgements; Note on the text; Introduction; 1. Gentlemen lawyers at the Inns of Court; 2. Ben Jonson, the lawyers and the wits; 3. Taverns and table talk; 4. Wits in the House of Commons; 5. Coryats Crudities (1611) and the sociability of print; 6. Traveller for the English wits; 7. Afterlives of the wits; Notes; Bibliography; Index.