Memories of War in Early Modern England [electronic resource] : Armor and Militant Nostalgia in Marlowe, Sidney, and Shakespeare /
Harlan, Susan.author.
This book examines literary depictions of the construction and destruction of the armored male body in combat in relation to early modern English understandings of the past. Bringing together the fields of material culture and militarism, Susan Harlan argues that the notion of “spoiling” – or the sanctioned theft of the arms and armor of the vanquished in battle – provides a way of thinking about England’s relationship to its violent cultural inheritance. She demonstrates how writers reconstituted the spoils of antiquity and the Middle Ages in an imagined military struggle between male bodies. An analysis of scenes of arming and disarming across texts by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare and tributes to Sir Philip Sidney reveals a pervasive militant nostalgia: a cultural fascination with moribund models and technologies of war. Readers will not only gain a better understanding of humanism but also a new way of thinking about violence and cultural production in Renaissance England.
Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
CHAPTER 1 – “Objects fit for Tamburlaine”: Self-Arming in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Robert Vaughan’s Portraits, and The Almain Armourer’s Album -- INTERLUDE – Epic Pastness: War Stories, Nostalgic Objects, and Sexual and Textual Spoils in Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage.-  CHAPTER 2 – Spoiling Sir Philip Sidney: Mourning and Military Violence in the Elegies, Lant’s Roll, and Greville’s Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney -- INTERLUDE – “Scatter’d Men”: Mutilated Male Bodies and Conflicting Narratives of Militant Nostalgia in Shakespeare’s Henry V.-  CHAPTER 3 – The Armored Body as Trophy: The Problem of the Roman Subject in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus -- CODA – “Let’s Do’t After the High Roman Fashion”: Funeral and Triumph -- BIBLIOGRAPHY.
This book examines literary depictions of the construction and destruction of the armored male body in combat in relation to early modern English understandings of the past. Bringing together the fields of material culture and militarism, Susan Harlan argues that the notion of “spoiling” – or the sanctioned theft of the arms and armor of the vanquished in battle – provides a way of thinking about England’s relationship to its violent cultural inheritance. She demonstrates how writers reconstituted the spoils of antiquity and the Middle Ages in an imagined military struggle between male bodies. An analysis of scenes of arming and disarming across texts by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare and tributes to Sir Philip Sidney reveals a pervasive militant nostalgia: a cultural fascination with moribund models and technologies of war. Readers will not only gain a better understanding of humanism but also a new way of thinking about violence and cultural production in Renaissance England.
Poetry.
Literature, Modern.
Literature—Philosophy.
Culture—Study and teaching.
British literature.
Literature—History and criticism.
Poetry and Poetics.
Early Modern/Renaissance Literature.
Literary Theory.
Cultural Theory.
British and Irish Literature.
Literary History.