The genre of pastoral romance flourished dramatically in Renaissance England between 1590 and 1650. One of its key elements is that it is the daughter, not the son, of the gentle family who increasingly becomes the subject of the romance's attempt to define and illustrate heroism. The pastoral heroine's task is paradoxical: to break out of her pastoral paradise in order to ensure its reconstitution. She is the princess, the shepherdess, the Lady, or the virtuous daughter who becomes a repository of honor and virtue in a changing society where traditional chivalric definitions of honor hold decreasing purchase.
This groundbreaking book examines the typical challenges faced by the pastoral romance heroine as she matures within the pastoral locus amoenus: the foundling dilemma; the loop-shaped quest: the rhetorical battle; the chastity threat; the reconciliation of beauty to virtue; and familial reunification. It illustrates how the allegorical, symbolic, and psychological characterizations of pastoral heroines in the works of Sidney, Spenser, Wroth, Fletcher, Milton, and Marvell anticipate developments in the representation of female subjectivities normally associated with the novel.
SUE P. STARKE is Associate Professor of English at Monmouth University, New Jersey.
Reviews
A stimulating and well-written study. [...] Dr Starke's observations on the variations of the main theme are in most cases very perceptive and enrich our understanding of the texts under scrutiny. ENGLISH STUDIES
Details
First Published: 16 Aug 2007
13 Digit ISBN: 9781843841241
Pages: 256
Size: 23.4 x 15.6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: D.S.Brewer
Series:
Studies in Renaissance LiteratureSubject:
Renaissance LiteratureDetails updated on 08 Sep 2010
Contents
- 1 The Pastoral Romance Heroine in English Renaissance Literature
- 2 The Arcadian Prison: Chastity and the Defense of the Princesses in Sidney's Two Arcadias
- 3 Spenser's Romance Heroines: The Heroic and the Pastoral in Books 3 and 6 of The Fairie Queene
- 4 Growing out of Pastoral: Wroth's Urania and the Female Pastoral Career
- 5 Fletcher's Clorin and Milton's Lady: The Performance of Chastity in Pastoral Drama
- 6 Milton's Eve and Marvell's Maria Fairfax: Wives and Daughters in the Pastoral Family Circle
- 7 Bibliography
- 8 Index
