Overview
Provides a literary-historical narrative of the poetics of evil, which previous scholarship has not yet treated in a sustained and systematic way
Offers a new perspective on the relationship between elite and popular culture and the literary and cultural significance of monstrous births and bodies
Analyzes a wide range of early modern writers including Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This engrossing volume studies the poetics of evil in early modern English culture, reconciling the Renaissance belief that literature should uphold morality with the compelling and attractive representations of evil throughout the period’s literature. The chapters explore a variety of texts, including Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Shakespeare’s Richard III, broadside ballads, and sermons, culminating in a new reading of Paradise Lost and a novel understanding of the dynamic interaction between aesthetics and theology in shaping seventeenth century Protestant piety. Through these discussions, the book introduces the concept of “sinister aesthetics”: artistic conventions that can make representations of the villainous, monstrous, or hellish pleasurable.
Reviews
“Sinister Aesthetics is a solid work of historically informed criticism that usefully and persuasively contributes to the ongoing scholarly corrective to New Historicism’s rigidly coercive visions of cultural determinism.” (Andrew Wadoski, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 73 (2), 2020)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Sinister Aesthetics
Book Subtitle: The Appeal of Evil in Early Modern English Literature
Authors: Joel Elliot Slotkin
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52797-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-52796-3Published: 05 July 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-84987-4Published: 01 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-52797-0Published: 22 June 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 289
Topics: Early Modern/Renaissance Literature, Comparative Literature, British and Irish Literature