Overview

John Heywood was an important literary and theatrical pioneer in his own right, but he is also a revealing lens through which to view the wider tumultuous history of the sixteenth century. He was, through the period from the mid-1520s to the 1560s, as near to a celebrity as Tudor England possessed, famed for his 'merry' persona and good humour. But his public image concealed a deeper engagement with religious and political history. Enduringly resistant to extremism, he variously entertained, counselled, and cautioned his readers and audiences through four reigns, finding himself, as regimes changed and religious policies shifted, successively celebrated, marginalised, anathematised, condemned to death, recuperated, and celebrated once more before finally retreating into exile on the Continent in 1564. He produced plays at the courts of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, performed and taught keyboard music, wrote lyric poetry and songs, and from the mid-sixteenth century turned to collecting and publishing highly successful volumes of proverbs and epigrams for which he was remembered well into the seventeenth century. Each of these works provides a subtle, often courageously critical engagement with the politics of its moment.To study Heywood's career takes us beyond the clichés of popular history, beyond Shakespeare and the Elizabethan playhouses, beyond the canonical Henrician court poets and the writers of the Elizabethan 'Golden Age', beyond even the experiences of the century's chief ministers, intellectuals, and martyrs, to a theatrical and literary world less visible in the conventional sources. It opens a window on a culture in which the actions of monarchs, their councillors, and their victims were witnessed and reflected upon at one remove from the centres of power. And it allows us to re-examine the significance of an individual who deserves our attention, not only for his considerable artistic achievements, but also for the determination with which, often against the odds, he used his talents in pursuit of wider humanist cultural principles for over half a century.

Full Product Details

Author:   Greg Walker (Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, University of Edinburgh)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.50cm , Height: 3.50cm , Length: 24.00cm
Weight:   0.850kg
ISBN:  

9780198851516

ISBN 10:   0198851510
Pages:   494
Publication Date:   29 April 2020
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Preface 1: Origins: Early Years: Johan Johan and Witty and Witless 2: Faith, Hope, and Mendacity: The Four PP 3: Interlude: The Annus Mirabilis of 1529 4: Cynicism and Hope: Gentleness and Nobility 5: Conscience and Satire in A Play of Love 6: Complaining about the Weather: Heywood, Thomas More, and the Opening of the Reformation Parliament 7: Discordant Voices: The Pardoner and The Friar 8: The Significance of Heywood's Interludes 9: New Forms, New Challenges: Heywood's Songs: Merriness, Malice, and the Death of More 10: Discord, Dissent, and Division: England, 1534-1543 11: In Kent and Christendom?: The Nature of Heywood's Treason 12: Rehabilitation and Reformation: The Epigrams and Proverbs 13: The Accession of Mary Tudor: 'The eagle's bird has spread his wings' 14: Speaking in Parables: The Spider and the Fly 15: Bellicose Verse: 'Scarborough Warning' 16: 'When all that is to was is brought': A Time of Endings and Thoughts of Flight 17: 'At this my extreme age': 'Old Heywood' in Exile 18: 'His own life and nature': Reputation and Legacy

Reviews

As readers of Greg Walker's other books might expect, John Heywood...is a highly readable blend of political history and literary scholarship; an additional pleasure comes from the deep sense of sympathetic engagement with his subject that Walker's biographical project has clearly inspired...The book is a history of a writer and his times...If, as Walker compellingly argues, [Heywood's] wit was not only a strategy for survival, but also offered resistance to oppression and demonstrated humanist faith in reason, his merry Heywood is a worthy subject of study and admiration in our time * Review of English Studies * ...includes some of the most thorough and contextually rich analyses of any Tudor texts. The intricate and convincing connections drawn between these texts and major events in early Reformation England are models of historical scholarship. * NABMSA Reviews * With a style lucid, engaging, and approachable, Walker weaves a remarkable, sophisticated narrative of Heywood's life, time, and creative work alongside...matters of Church and State. The result is a sensitive and deep engagement of the playwright that brings to life a figure exceptional for his discursive breadth, length of career, and humane, ""merry"" spirit. * Seventeenth-Century News * not just a study of this...crucially important playwright, but also a detailed, elegantly written examination of Tudor England in these years. * Suzannah Lipscomb, Not Just The Tudors podcast * Greg Walker's study of John Heywood, known as a Tudor dramatist, against the backdrop of English Reformation politics, magisterially reveals the inadequacy of that common soubriquet...This absorbing, detailed and witty tour de force even has an apt dust jacket... * Journal of Ecclesiastical History * ...this book is inviting and likable. It is also comprehensive and well documented with 66 pages of endnotes ranging from Tudor to current resources. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * J. S. Carducci, Winona State University, CHOICE * The volume is a highly valuable contribution to Heywood studies that will surely inspire literary scholarship for years to come. * Sarah K. Scott, Seventeenth-Century News *

...this book is inviting and likable. It is also comprehensive and well documented with 66 pages of endnotes ranging from Tudor to current resources. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * J. S. Carducci, Winona State University, CHOICE *

Author Information

Greg Walker is Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, where he was previously Masson Professor of English, and Head of the School of Literature, Languages and Cultures between 2009 and 2011. Before that he was Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Leicester. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Historical Society, The English Association, The Society of Antiquaries of London, and the Agder Academy of Sciences and Letters (Norway). His research interests are in late medieval and Tudor literature and drama, and the cultural history of the sixteenth century, but he has also written on the cinema of the 1930s and progressive rock music. With Elaine M. Treharne, he is co-editor of the Oxford Textual Perspectives monograph series.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions