Spatial speculations: The poetics of place in Renaissance verse.

摘要

This dissertation explores representations of English rural and urban space in early modern poetry. I argue that the town and country debates informed literary inscriptions of place within this period by articulating a polarization of these two English spheres. The literature detailing English space in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries performs the anxious complexities inherent in early modern understandings of the role and quality of town and country. A set of conventions that shape this diverse group of texts emerges out of my analysis. The recurring use of negative constructions of space, an attention to commercial as well as horticultural excesses, and a keen interest in reciprocity and exchange populate the poetic surveys of rural and urban spheres.;Chapter One considers texts that champion England's hinterland and encourage Englishmen to abandon the city for the countryside. A proclamation by Charles I and poems by Richard Fanshawe and Thomas Randolph illustrate the advantages and benefits of country life and stress the importance of hospitality.;Chapter Two examines the acerbic accounts of urban life found in city satires. While these satiric renderings do not effusively promote urban space or city lifestyles, poems by Isabella Whitney, John Taylor and Ben Jonson demonstrate an informed and, at times, intimate perspective of London's streets, markets, waterways, and institutions.;Chapter Three also concentrates on literary representations of urban space, though this chapter includes poems that applaud rather than critique the excesses and liberties of city life. The extensive catalogues and celebrations of personal freedom that comprise poems by Nicholas Breton and William Habington produce cityscapes defined by their consumerism.;Chapter Four discusses the mediating tendencies of country house poems. I argue that this rural-minded genre imports urban tastes into a fecund and generous countryside. The country house poems by Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, and Aemilia Lanyer perform this spatial mediation through hyperbolic descriptions and idealized portrayals of hospitality.