Research Catalog

Title

Volition's face : personification and the will in Renaissance literature / Andrew Escobedo.

Author

Escobedo, Andrew, 1967-

Publication

Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 326 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"Modern readers and writers find it natural to contrast the agency of realistic fictional characters to the constrained range of action typical of literary personifications. Yet no commentator before the eighteenth century suggests that prosopopoeia signals a form of reduced agency. Andrew Escobedo argues that premodern writers, including Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton, understood personification as a literary expression of will, an essentially energetic figure that depicted passion or concept transforming into action. As the will emerged as an isolatable faculty in the Christian Middle Ages, it was seen not only as the instrument of human agency but also as perversely independent of other human capacities, for example, intellect and moral character. Renaissance accounts of the will conceived of volition both as the means to self-creation and the faculty by which we lose control of ourselves. After offering a brief history of the will that isolates the distinctive features of the faculty in medieval and Renaissance thought, Escobedo makes his case through an examination of several personified figures in Renaissance literature: Conscience in the Tudor interludes, Despair in Doctor Faustus and book I of The Faerie Queen, Love in books III and IV of The Faerie Queen, and Sin in Paradise Lost. These examples demonstrate that literary personification did not amount to a dim reflection of "realistic" fictional character, but rather that it provided a literary means to explore the numerous conundrums posed by the premodern notion of the human will. This book will be of great interest to faculty and graduate students interested in Medieval studies and Renaissance literature. "This exhilarating and brilliant book will be a most welcome and timely addition to the ReFormations series, to which it will add distinction. It is also a book that can be relished sentence by sentence, as Escobedo is a writer of intellectual verve and boldness, making hard-won claims look obvious once made." --Sarah Beckwith, Duke University"--

Series Statement

ReFormations: Medieval and Early Modern

Uniform Title

Reformations.

Subjects

• Personification in literature
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• English literature > Early modern
• LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance
• Will in literature
• English literature > Early modern, 1500-1700 > History and criticism
• LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
• 1500-1700
• LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Personification, energy, and allegory -- The prosopopoetic will: ours, though not we -- Conscience in the Tudor interludes -- Despair in Marlowe and Spenser -- Love and Spenser's Cupid -- Sin and Milton's Angel -- Epilogue: Premodern personification and posthumanism?

Call Number

JFE 17-6271

ISBN

• 9780268101664
• 0268101663
• 9780268101671
• 0268101671

LCCN

2016058504

OCLC

962232428

Author

Escobedo, Andrew, 1967- author.

Title

Volition's face : personification and the will in Renaissance literature / Andrew Escobedo.

Publisher

Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2017]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

ReFormations: Medieval and Early Modern

Reformations.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1500-1700

Research Call Number

JFE 17-6271