Guilty Creatures : Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorship: Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorship

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Oxford University Press, USA, Apr 5, 2001 - Literary Criticism - 280 pages
In this innovative and learned study, Dennis Kezar examines how Renaissance poets conceive the theme of killing as a specifically representational and interpretive form of violence. Closely reading both major poets and lesser known authors of the early modern period, Kezar explores the ethical self-consciousness and accountability that attend literary killing, paying particular attention to the ways in which this reflection indicates the poet's understanding of his audience. Among the many poems through which Kezar explores the concept of authorial guilt elicited by violent representation are Skelton's Phyllyp Sparowe, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the multi-authored Witch of Edmonton, and Milton's Samson Agonistes.

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Contents

The Renaissance Killing Poem
3
John Skeltons Precedent
17
Two Spenser and the Poetics of Indiscretion
50
THREE The Properties of Shakespeares Globe
86
FOUR The Witch of Edmonton and the Guilt of Possession
114
SIX Guilt and the Constitution of Authorship in Henry V
172
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Page 11 - I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore. Ros. Good my lord ! [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you : — Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! Is it not monstrous, that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit...
Page 5 - I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors...
Page 103 - Caesar's blood Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords; Then walk we forth, even to the marketplace, And waving our red weapons o'er our heads, Let's all cry, "Peace, freedom, and liberty!
Page 74 - ... the sage And serious doctrine of Virginity; And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know More happiness than this thy present lot. Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric, 790 That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence; Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced.
Page 114 - I have heard That guilty creatures, sitting at a play, Have by the very cunning of the scene Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ.
Page 100 - I do not strain at the position, It is familiar; but at the author's drift: Who, in his circumstance," expressly proves — That no man is the lord of any thing, (Though in and of him there be much consisting,) Till he communicate his parts to others...
Page 148 - Extolling patience as the truest fortitude, And to the bearing well of all calamities, All chances incident to man's frail life, Consolatories writ With studied argument, and much persuasion sought, Lenient of grief and anxious thought.
Page 117 - tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly : If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, With his surcease, success ; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, — We'd jump the life to come.
Page 19 - Or I shall live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten; From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die : The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entomb'd in men's eyes shall lie.
Page 144 - Nor the other light of life continue long, But yield to double darkness nigh at hand : So much I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat, nature within me seems In all her functions weary of herself ; My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest.

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