The Review of English Studies - current issue

On Dating the Duchess: The Personal and Social Context of Book of the Duchess

Foster, M. — 2008-04-24

The Book of the Duchess is usually dated to various points between 1368 and 1374. This article suggests that these various datings imply different interpretations of the poem, because at some point in this period John of Gaunt began an affair with Katherine Swynford, Geoffrey Chaucer's sister-in-law and governess to the children of Gaunt and Blanche, duchess of Lancaster, whose death is the topic of the text. This article explores how dating Book of the Duchess to before or after their affair began alters our understanding of Chaucer's representations of himself and Gaunt and his intentions in writing this literary tribute.

Honing a History: Thomas More's Revisions of his Richard III

Hanham, A. — 2008-04-24

The texts of Thomas More's Historia Richardi Regis Angliae Tertii that survive, in whole or in part, witness More's propensity for revising that work. But hitherto it has been difficult to detect any pattern in his revisions, because in editing their respective volumes in the Yale Complete Works of Saint Thomas More, R. S. Sylvester and Daniel Kinney held conflicting views about the nature and date of the version first printed in 1565. Nor did either of them seriously consider that the version of the English History of King Richard the Thirde that was printed by Richard Grafton in 1543 might incorporate More's own revisions of a text which is otherwise known only from the defective draft that William Rastell published in 1557, with the assurance that it emanated from his uncle's own hand. This article examines More's practices in revising both his Latin and English texts of Richard III. New evidence from Grafton's editing of his manuscript of the Chronicle of Iohn Hardyng is also adduced.

Three Disputed Shakespeare Readings: Associations and Contexts

Jackson, M. P. — 2008-04-24

Preparing a critical edition of a Shakespeare play necessarily entails selecting from among variants preserved in the earliest printed texts or later proposed as conjectural emendations. This article examines one problematic passage in Romeo and Juliet (II.ii.26–32 in The Riverside Shakespeare) and two in Hamlet (I.iv.36–8 and II.ii.174–86) and argues that in each case nearly all recent editors have made the wrong choice. The arguments for the readings supported here rest on their relevance to the immediate context and on their complex associations with similar passages in other Shakespeare plays. Special attention is paid to the nature of the imagery.

Dante and the Distraction of Lyric in Milton's 'To My Friend Mr Henry Lawes'

McDowell, N. — 2008-04-24

The question of why Milton's poems of the 1620s and 1630s were published at the end of 1645 remains to be satisfactorily answered. The sonnet that Milton sent to Henry Lawes at the beginning of 1646, probably to accompany a presentation copy of the Poems, can shed light on the political and personal reasons behind the decision to publish at this moment, even though Milton repudiated some of the poems (such as the Latin elegies) and others, such as the elegy for Lancelot Andrewes, seem to jar with the reformist image projected in the prose. Lawes was the most prominent member of the royalist literary community with whom Milton had a personal and creative connexion. ‘To My Friend Mr Henry Lawes’ signals Milton's desire for cultural rapprochement with royalist writers and artists in the aftermath of the hostile Presbyterian reaction to the divorce tracts. The sonnet adopts the style of a Jonsonian epigram and may make reference to unpublished writing by one of the royalists' favourite poets, William Cartwright. Yet the allusion to Dante in the final lines of the sonnet, which conceals a further allusion to Lucan, hints at Milton's residual suspicion of Cavalier poetics and his sense of prophetic vocation.

Michael Drayton, Literary History and Historians in Verse

Van Es, B. — 2008-04-24

In or around 1621, Michael Drayton penned his well-known assessment of fellow poet Samuel Daniel, whom he described as ‘too much Historian in verse’. This article investigates that dismissal, arguing that behind it lies a long-standing and consistent literary position. Drayton's vision was of a literature that combined both poetry and history. That vision had been presented first in the Heroicall Epistles of 1597, which opened by responding directly to Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond. The Epistles were innovative in applying the structure of Ovid's Heroides to the vernacular tradition of the Mirror for Magistrates. As a result, Drayton highlighted a newly explicit interaction between literary and historical texts. More dangerously, he also presented individual epistles as moral counsel for his patrons. These qualities made the Epistles an enormous popular success. Yet they are also likely to have caused offence, above all to the dedicatee of the first set of letters: Lucy, Countess of Bedford. Setting wider literary trends alongside Drayton's personal experience of patronage, this article offers a new perspective on the development and decline of history in verse.

'Twixt Hope and Fear': John Berkenhead, Henry Lawes, and Banishment from London during the English Revolution

Major, P. — 2008-04-24

Who sits at home too bears a loade

Greater than those that gad abroad¹

PAUL STROHM (ed.). Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English.

Woodcock, M. — 2008-04-24

DANIEL WAKELIN. Humanism, Reading, and English Literature 1430-1530.

Petrina, A. — 2008-04-24

IAN MUNRO. The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London. The City and its Double.

Newman, K. — 2008-04-24

ROBERT S. MIOLA (ed.). Early Modern Catholicism: An Anthology of Primary Sources.

Hudon, W. V. — 2008-04-24

BEATRICE GROVES. Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare, 1592-1604.

Voss, P. J. — 2008-04-24

MICHAEL WITMORE. Pretty Creatures: Children and Fiction in the English Renaissance.

Lamb, E. — 2008-04-24

MARSHALL GROSSMAN (ed.). Reading Renaissance Ethics.

Robinson, B. S. — 2008-04-24

CHRISTOPHER D'ADDARIO. Exile and Journey in Seventeenth-Century Literature.

Jowitt, C. — 2008-04-24

GINA BLOOM. Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England.

Folkerth, W. — 2008-04-24

REIKO OYA. Representing Shakespearean Tragedy: Garrick, the Kembles, and Kean.

Thomson, P. — 2008-04-24

ROBERTA BARKER. Early Modern Tragedy, Gender and Performance, 1984-2000: The Destined Livery.

Aebischer, P. — 2008-04-24

CAROL WATTS. The Cultural Work of Empire: The Seven Years' War and the Imagining of the Shandean State.

Lynch, J. — 2008-04-24

JAMES ROBERT ALLARD. Romanticism, Medicine, and the Poet's Body.

Darcy, J. — 2008-04-24

ANTHONY MANDAL. Jane Austen and the Popular Novel: The Determined Author.

Sutherland, K. — 2008-04-24

MARGARET SMITH (ed.). Selected Letters of Charlotte Bronte.

Stoneman, P. — 2008-04-24

FRANCIS O'GORMAN (ed.). Victorian Literature and Finance.

Bivona, D. — 2008-04-24

KENDALL JOHNSON. Henry James and the Visual.

Peters, M. — 2008-04-24

FINN FORDHAM. Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: Unravelling Universals.

Deppman, J. — 2008-04-24

PHILIP KITCHER. Joyce's Kaleidoscope: an invitation to Finnegans Wake.

Fordham, F. — 2008-04-24