Title: Renaissance Suppliants
Description: Renaissance Suppliants studies supplication as a social and literary event in the long European Renaissance, arguing that scenes of supplication are defining episodes in a literary tradition stretching back to Greco-Roman antiquity, A ritual form of communication in moments of extreme helplessness and need, supplication speaks to the ways that people negotiate conflict, manage situations in which relationships threaten to unravel, and live together despite grave inequalities. Renaissance writers found in classical scenes of supplication paradigmatic episodes for exploring fundamental questions of politics and religion, ethics and identity, sexuality and family, and they transformed the literary and social structures of the ancient past to suit the needs of the present. By taking up different aspects of Renaissance supplicatory discourse in erotic poetry, drama, and epic, Leah Whittington argues that postures of humiliation and abjection become central for writers thinking about problems of antagonism, difference, and hierarchy. Major reconsiderations of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Milton show how Renaissance poets invest gestures of self-abasement with unexpected power and dignity.
Subjects: Emotions in literature, Reconciliation in literature, Power (Philosophy) in literature, European literature, History and criticism, Renaissance