Title: Framing authority : sayings, self, and society in sixteenth-century England /
Authors: Crane, Mary Thomas, 1956-
Publisher: Princeton University Press,
Year: 1993
Subjects: English literature History and criticism Theory, etc.; Literature and society England History; English literature Classical influences; Frame-stories History and criticism.; Commonplace-books History.; Authority in literature.; Rhetoric; Self in literature.; Humanists England; English language Rhetoric; England Intellectual life
Abstract: Writers in sixteenth-century England often kept commonplace books in which to jot down notable fragments encountered during reading or conversation, but few critics have fully appreciated the formative influence this activity had on humanism. Focusing on the discursive practices of "gathering" textual fragments and "framing" or forming, arranging, and assimilating them, Mary Crane shows how keeping commonplace books made up the English humanists' central transaction with antiquity and provided an influential model for authorial practice and authoritative self-fashioning. She thereby revises our perceptions of English humanism, revealing its emphasis on sayings, collectivism, shared resources, anonymous inscription, and balance of power - in contrast to an aristocratic mode of thought, which championed individualism, imperialism, and strong assertion of authorial voice. Crane first explores the theory of gathering and framing as articulated in influential sixteenth-century logic and rhetoric texts and in the pedagogical theory with which they were linked in the humanist project. She then investigates the practice of humanist discourse through a series of texts that exemplify the notebook method of composition. These texts include school curricula, political and economic treatises (such as More's Utopia), contemporary biography, and collections of epigrams and poetic miscellanies.
Contents: Ch. I. Finding a Place: The Humanist Logic of Gathering and Framing -- Ch. II. Common People, Uncommon Words: The Power of Rhetoric -- Ch. III. Seed or Goad: Educating the Humanist Subject -- Ch. IV. Educational Practice in Early Sixteenth-Century England -- Ch. V. Pastime or Profit: Aristocratic and Humanist Ideology, 1520-1550 -- Ch. VI. Framing the State: William Cecil and the Humanist System, 1558-1598 -- Ch. VII. "In a Net to Hold the Wind": Gathering, Framing, and Lyric Subjectivity, 1520-1540 -- Ch. VIII. Bend or Frame: Lyric Collections and the Dangers of Narrative, 1550-1590.