Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England
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Book Overview
This fascinating book--the first comprehensive study of reading and politics in early modern England--examines how texts of that period were produced and disseminated and how readers interpreted and were influenced by them. Based on the voluminous reading notes of one gentleman, Sir William Drake, the book shows how readers formed radical social values and political ideas as they experienced civil war, revolution, republic, and restoration. By analyzing the strategies of Drake's reading practices, as well as those of several key contemporaries (including Jonson, Milton, and Clarendon), Kevin Sharpe demonstrates how reading in the rhetorical culture of Renaissance England was a political act. He explains how Drake, for example, by reading and rereading classical and humanist works of Tacitus, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Bacon, became the advocate of dissimulation, intrigue, and realpolitik. Authority, Sharpe argues, was experienced, reviewed, and criticized not only in the public forum but in the study, on the page, and in the imagination of early modern readers.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0300187181
ISBN13:9780300187182
Release Date:March 2000
Publisher:Yale University Press
Length:374 Pages
Weight:1.15 lbs.
Dimensions:0.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"
Related Subjects
16th Century 17th Century Books & Reading England Europe General Historical Study & Educational Resources History History of Books Humanities International Relations Literary Criticism Literary Criticism & Collections Literature Modern (16th-21st Centuries) Movements & Periods Political Science Politics & Government Renaissance Social HistoryCustomer Reviews
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