An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction (Oxford Worlds Classics)
by Paul Salzman
Category: Literary Criticism

These five works - George Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J; John Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit; Robert Greene's Pandosto. The Triumph of Time; Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller and Thomas Deloney's Jack of Newbury - represent Elizabethan fiction at its best. The Adventures of Master F. J. is a comedy of manners with a sting in its tail. In Euphues John Lyly invented a new, elaborate rhetorical style which delighted its Elizabethan audience and has been praised or parodied ever since. Pandosto was Shakespeare's source for The Winter's Tale, but Greene's is a darker story designed to shock the reader accustomed to romantic conventions. The Unfortunate Traveller marks the peak of Nashe's gift for literary pastiche, mixing picaresque narrative with mock-historical fantasy. Jack of Newbury dedicated to 'All famous cloth Workers in England', sums up important social contradictions in sharply observed comic scenes and brisk, witty dialogue.