Reading Class through Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton

Through detailed readings of six canonical Renaissance works, this book shows the unique ability of literary criticism to describe class.

Christopher Warley (Author)

9781107681125, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 October 2017

219 pages, 2 b/w illus.
23 x 15.2 x 1.1 cm, 0.33 kg

'Warley provides a rare example of how rich and challenging the language of class can be in renaissance texts.' Joel Swann, Studies in Theatre and Performance

Why study Renaissance literature? Reading Class through Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton examines six canonical Renaissance works to show that reading literature also means reading class. Warley demonstrates that careful reading offers the best way to understand social relations and in doing so he offers a detailed historical argument about what class means in the seventeenth century. Drawing on a wide range of critics, from Erich Auerbach to Jacques Rancière, from Cleanth Brooks to Theodor Adorno, and from Raymond Williams to Jacques Derrida, the book implicitly defends literary criticism. It reaffirms six Renaissance poems and plays, including poems by Donne, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Milton's Paradise Lost, as the sophisticated and moving works of art that generations of readers have loved. These accessible interpretations also offer exciting new directions for the roles of art and criticism in the contemporary, post-industrial world.

1. Of the fickle inequality that is between us
2. The fickle fee-simple
3. Just Horatio
4. Ideal Donne
5. Virtuoso Donne
6. Uncouth Milton, part one
7. Uncouth Milton, part two.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary theory [DSA]