Redefining Elizabethan Literature (review)

In this new study of non-dramatic Elizabethan literature, Georgia Brown suggests that "the writers who burst on to the literary scene in the 1590s [in England] can justifiably be said to constitute 'a generation of shame'" (3). Their obsession with shame is apparent, she contends, in both their subject matter (which is often indecent) and their preferred forms (which may be extremely slight or excessively ornamental), and they self-consciously manipulate their shamefulness to construct new definitions of literature and authorship.

She begins with a fascinating chapter on Thomas Nashe, who is in many ways her paradigmatic author: his work and his career epitomize the new "poetics of shame" (55). As a professional writer, Nashe develops a form of self-promotion that depends, paradoxically, on self-denigration, deriving his authority from the very marginality and wastefulness of his productions. His works repeatedly foreground their own playfulness, inconsistency, and hybridity. The fragmentary nature of these texts (and others like them) is particularly important, for it is in the cracks and fissures that the writer's individuality — his difference from traditional models — can be seen.

Brown then goes on to consider the epyllion, one of the most characteristic forms of the decade. She examines eleven examples of the genre, from the well-known poems by Marlowe and Shakespeare to lesser-read works by Lodge, Drayton, Marston, and others. She argues that both in its indebtedness to Ovid (rather than Virgil) and in its self-conscious triviality, the epillyon stands in an oppositional relation to the heroic epic, offering an alternative vision of reality. Rather than representing conventional masculinity, its authors repeatedly insist on the fluidity of the genders, "embrac[ing] femininity to construct a hermaphroditic model of literary prowess" (108). Somewhat surprisingly, this is also an "acutely social" genre (175): its notorious concern with sexuality helps to create a new, elite literary community while challenging orthodox humanist morality.

The decade's interest in gender and sexuality leads Brown to explore how the forms and ideas developed then "interact with contemporary understandings of national identity" (179). Using Holinshed's Chronicles as the touchstone for a vision of English history as public and masculine, she sets against that vision the more feminized, private perspectives presented in the lyric, the complaint, and the verse epistle. Her careful readings here of Daniel's Complaint of Rosamund and Daniel's Englands Heroicall Epistles are particularly powerful, and she argues persuasively that the works she examines call simplistic notions of truth into question, "suggest[ing] that narrative and lyric modes are interdependent versions of reality . . . that heroic narrative has its necessary complement in the marginal affairs of the lyric" (213).

The study as a whole is consistently interesting and informative, especially in its discussion of less-frequently-read Elizabethan texts. It makes a useful contribution to the growing body of recent criticism concerned with Ovid's influence on early modern writing, which has been galvanized by the work of Lynn Enterline (who is frequently cited here). It can, perhaps, be occasionally frustrating to read, as it seems to take on the structural characteristics of the texts it examines, becoming somewhat diffuse, digressive, or repetitive. But its rewards far outweigh any drawbacks. Brown has written an admirably intelligent and sensitive book that should be of great interest to anyone studying or teaching Elizabethan literature and culture.