Aspects of subjectivity
Subtitle: society and individuality from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare and Milton
By: by Anthony Low.
Series: Medieval & Renaissance literary studies; Medieval and Renaissance literary studies
Publisher: Duquesne University Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Pittsburgh, Pa
Language: eng
Number of pages: 242
Subjects: English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism.; Self in literature.; Literature and society -- England -- History -- 17th century.; Alienation (Social psychology) in literature.; Individuality in literature.; Subjectivity in literature.
Description: "Aspects of Subjectivity focuses on representative literary works that illustrate turns in the history of individuality and subjectivity and the changes in one's relations with community and society. In conjunction with these literary works, Anthony Low considers pertinent historical beliefs, attitudes, and practices, including the experience of loneliness and exile, the development of sacramental confession from communal reconciliation to personal absolution from sin, the abolition of Purgatory and the traditional Christian solidarity with the ancestral dead, the role of conscience in the development of self, and the rise in Shakespeare and Milton of a typically modern sense of autonomous individuality and subjectivity."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-237) and index.
Table of contents: title: Exile in the tenth century : alienation and subjectivity in The Wanderer; title: Privacy and community : medieval confession and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; title: Sin and penance at the Reformation : redcrosse, the church, and everyman; title: Hamlet and the ghost of purgatory : intimations of killing the father; title: "Umpire conscience" : freedom and obedience in Paradise lost; title: The fall into subjectivity : Milton's "paradise within" and "abyss of fears and horrors"; title: Theoretical considerations and conclusion.