Although the term courtier poet is widely used in discussions of Elizabethan literature, it has never been carefully defined. In this study, Steven W.May isolates the elite social environment of the court by defining the words court and courtier as they were understood by Tudor aristocrats. He examines the types of poems that these poets wrote, the occasions for which they wrote, and the nature of the poems themselves.

Born in 1554, Sir Philip Sidney was hailed as the perfect Renaissance patron, soldier, soldier, lover, and courtier, but it was only after his untimely death at the age of thirty-two that his literary achievements were truly recognized. This collection includes supplementary texts, such as his letters and the numerous elegies which appeared after his death, help illustrate the wide spectrum of his achievements, and the admiration he inspired in his contemporaries.

An enthralling new biography of the most exciting and charismatic adventurer in the history of the English-speaking world Tall, dark, handsome, and damnably proud, Sir Walter Raleigh was one of history's most romantic characters. An explorer, soldier, courtier, pirate, and poet, Raleigh risked his life by trifling with the Virgin Queen's affections. To his enemies—and there were many—he was an arrogant liar and traitor, deserving of every one of his thirteen years in the Tower of London. Regardless of means, his accomplishments are legion: he founded the first American colony, gave the Irish the potato, and defeated Spain. He was also a brilliant operator in the shark pool of Elizabethan court politics, until he married a court beauty, without Elizabeth's permission, and later challenged her capricious successor, James I. Raleigh Trevelyan has traveled to each of the principal places where Raleigh adventured—Ireland, the Azores, Roanoke Islands, and the legendary El Dorado (Orinoco)—and uncovered new insights into Raleigh's extraordinary life. New information from the Spanish archives give a freshness and immediacy to this detailed and convincing portrait of one of the most compelling figures of the Elizabethan era.

The Thirty Years War Meets the American WayWhen Grantville, W. Va., was suddenly hurled from 2000 back to 1632, they landed in the middle of the Thirty Years War. But they brought American Freedom and Justice -- and modern guns -- along with them. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

This 1999 book offers an original study of lyric form and social custom in the Elizabethan age. Ilona Bell explores the tendency of Elizabethan love poems not only to represent an amorous thought, but to conduct the courtship itself. Where studies have focused on courtiership, patronage and preferment at court, her focus is on love poetry, amorous courtship, and relations between Elizabethan men and women. The book examines the ways in which the tropes and rhetoric of love poetry were used to court Elizabethan women (not only at court and in the great houses, but in society at large) and how the women responded to being wooed, in prose, poetry and speech. Bringing together canonical male poets and women writers, Ilona Bell investigates a range of texts addressed to, written by, read, heard or transformed by Elizabethan women, and charts the beginnings of a female lyric tradition.

Explores the poetry of the Renaissance, from Dunbar in the late 15th century to the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne in the early 17th. The book offers more than the wealth of literature discussed: it is a pioneering work in its own right, bringing the insights of contemporary literary and cultural theory to an overview of the period.

Roger Kuin's Chamber Music is a playfully written, imaginative, and ultimately demanding book, with a critical approach characterized by an unusual and indiosynchratic post-modern critical style that will challenge the reader's perceptions of what a book of criticism should and can do. Analysing the sonnet sequences of Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare both from an interpretive angle and from the perspective of a post-modern re-evaluation of the Renaissance sonnets, Roger Kuin's discussion is influenced by many modern literary critics, including Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco. Kuin focuses on the problems inherent in the form of the sonnet sequence, emphasizing the various forms of indeterminacy central to their meaning. His sense of the intertextual relationship among the major English sequences is subtle, and in places, strikingly original, in combination with a highly sophisticated understanding of theory. Chamber Music is a book that will infuriate many, but ultimately reward those who flow with its idiosyncratic style towards Roger Kuin's admirable and expert conclusions.