Overview

A deeply researched study of the social transmission and adaptation of poetry texts originating in pre-Civil War England, traced through the seventeenth century and sometimes beyond. Both manuscript and printed miscellanies are used, as well as other forms of publication, and case studies unusually span elite, popular and provincial audiences. As far as possible, texts are placed according to their original contexts and functions (“Directions”) then followed through various answerings, parodies, co-optings and social, commercial and political adaptations (“Re-directions”). Case studies choose examples which have not been fully researched, so that a large amount of new material is presented from poets writing in a variety of environments. Results are sometimes startling and often amusing, giving a vivid sense of how poems were read and used in material exchange and providing a picture of literary activity far removed from what traditional, canonical literary history has often assumed.

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9781032897189

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Cedric C. Brown, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Reading, subsequently Professorial Research Consultant at the University of Plymouth, was formerly a well-known Miltonist and the founder Editor of the very long-running interdisciplinary book series, Early Modern Literature in History, which has now passed 100 titles. With regard to the present project, he also published frequently on occasional poetry of all kinds. There are also connections with his Friendship and its Discourses in the Seventeenth Century (2016).

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