Selfish Gifts: The Politics of Exchange and English Courtly Literature, 1580-1628Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 2006 - 303 Seiten Engaging with a wide range of texts on gift-theory, extending from Senecas De Beneficiis to Derridas Given Time, Selfish Gifts examines the importance of gift ethics and the rhetoric of honorable giving to the literature of late Elizabeth and early Stuart England. It demonstrates that the ideal of the freely given and disinterested gift shaped the language of early modern clientage, along with literary representations of patrons and patronage systems during this period. Selfish Gifts examines how early modern clients moved quickly and strategically to assimilate the language of competition and equality, characteristic of an emerging market economy, within their existing discourses of gift exchange, in order to maximize the rewards they might induce from an increasingly diverse group of patrons.To give is to exercise power and thus, as numerous modern gift-theorists and anthropologists elucidate, the gift is implicitly self-interested even as it derives value from appearing altruistic; nowhere is this paradox more significant than in a patronage economy such as that which shaped literary production in early modern England. In pursuing that paradox and its implications, Selfish Gifts highlights crucial connections and cultural tensions between political and sexual giving, between 'giving' truth and flattery, between the sovereignty and subjection of gift donor/recipient, and between strategic and so-called 'sacrificial' giving. Those tensions are examined in the context of the latter years of Elizabeth Is rule, through the contrasting reign of James I and up to the early Caroline period. -- |
Inhalt
47 | |
A mutual render only me for thee True Gifts in Shakespeares Sonnets | 83 |
Competitive Gifts and Strategic Exchange at the Jacobean Court | 125 |
Gifts for the Somerset Wedding | 159 |
Fortunes darling kings content The Duke of Buckingham as Gift Problem | 188 |
Epilogue | 230 |
Notes | 235 |
Bibliography | 279 |
299 | |
Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
Allophanes appear argues Astrophil benefits bestowed bond Bucking Cambridge Univ Carr Chapman clients Countess of Bedford court courtiers courtly criticism Culture Daniel defend Delia desire Donne Donne's donor Earl early modern economy Elizabeth Elizabethan England English epithalamium erotic Essex favor favorite favorite's flattery friendship gift economy gift exchange gift ideal giving grace honor Idios Idios's Jacobean James's John John Donne Jonson King James King Lear king's Lear Lear's literary London lover male marketplace masque mistress Moral Essays Musophilus notion offered Oxford paradox Parthenophe patron patronage system poem poet poet-lover poet-lover's poet's poetry political Portia Press Prince procreation sonnets queen receive recipient reciprocation refusal relationship Renaissance reward rhetoric Rosamond royal gift Samuel Daniel Sejanus self-interested Seneca sequence sexual Shakespeare's Sonnets social Somerset Somerset wedding sonnet 35 sonnet 48 speaker Stella Stephen Orgel Timon Timon of Athens tion trans truth verse writing
Beliebte Passagen
Seite 31 - It did always seem so to us ; but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most ; for equalities are so weighed that curiosity in neither can make choice of cither's moiety.
Seite 59 - ... me. Love in thine eyes doth build his bower, And sleeps within their pretty shine ; And if I look the boy will lower, And from their orbs shoot shafts divine. Love works thy heart within his fire And in my tears doth firm the same ; And if I tempt, it will retire, And of my plaints doth make a game. Love, let me cull her choicest flowers, And pity me, and calm her eye ; Make soft her heart, dissolve her lowers, Then will I praise thy deity. But if thou do not, Love, I'll truly serve her, In spite...
Seite 17 - I did feele it done, as soone as meant: You cannot doubt, but I who freely know This Good from you, as freely will it owe; And though my fortune humble me, to take The smallest courtesies with thankes, I make Yet choyce from whom I take them...
Seite 57 - Highness' servant, but yet nothing. Twenty friends that though they say they will be sure I find them sure to be slow. A thousand hopes but all nothing ; a hundred promises but yet nothing. Thus casting up the inventory of my friends, hopes, promises, and times, the summa totaUs amounteth to just nothing.