The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes

by Leah S. Marcus

Overview

"Leah Marcus's The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes is a fascinating study of why James and Charles promoted some types of rural sport and festival and of how certain literary texts participated in promoting or critiquing royal policy. . . . Marcus provocatively links texts not often studied in conjunction with one another, and she provides strong and detailed readings of those texts."—Jean E. Howard

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226504520
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	03/23/1989
Edition description:	4th Edition
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Janel Mueller is a professor of English, the William Rainey Harper Professor in the College, and dean of the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Native Tongue and the Word: Developments in English Prose Style, 1380-1580.

Leah S. Marcus is the Edwin Mims Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Her books include Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents and Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton. With Mary Beth Rose, Mueller and Marcus edited Elizabeth I: Collected Works.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
I. Introduction: The Politics of Mirth
II. Pastimes and the Purging of Theater: Ben Jonson's Love Restored and Bartholomew Fair
III. The Court Restored to the Country: The Vision of Delight, Christmas His Masque, and The Devil Is an Ass
IV. Pleasure and Virtue Reconciled: Jonson's Celebration of the Book of Sports, 11618 and 1633
V. Churchman among the Maypoles: Herrick and the Hesperides
VI. Milton's Anti-Laudian Masque
VII. Pastimes without a Court: Richard Lovelace and Andrew Marvell
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Paper edition of the 1986 original. Subtitled: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell and the defense of old holiday pastimes. A study of why James and Charles promoted some types of rural sport and festival and how certain literary texts participated in promoting or critiquing royal policy. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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