Sons and Authors in Elizabethan England

by Derek B. Alwes

ISBN: 0-87413-858-2          Published in 2004          $42.50          AUP Order Form

This book explores the ways in which three exemplary English writers negotiated new social spaces for fiction writing, creating authorial identities that sought to escape the stigma of prodigality encoded in the dismissive cultural attitudes toward poetic "toys" by demonstrating the social value of fiction. From John Lyly's Euphues to Philip Sidney's Arcadia to Robert Greene's cony-catching pamphlets, this book traces a cultural trajectory from relatively conventional patronage appeals to increasingly audacious claims of "authority." Adopting a generational model in which the three young men pursue the possibility of a mature exercise of their art, this study also argues that each of the authors' careers traces a similar trajectory as the young men attempt to grow out of a reliance on conventional attitudes toward authorship into a more mature confidence in their powers and in the power of fiction to influence the world around them. Derek B. Alwes is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio State University-Newark.