Fulke Greville's reputation has always been overshadowed by that of his more famous friend, Philip Sidney, a legacy due in part to Greville's complex moulding of his authorial persona as Achates to Sidney's Aeneas, and in part to the formidable complexity of his poetry and prose. This volume seeks to vindicate Greville's 'obscurity' as an intrinsic feature of his poetic thinking, and as a privileged site of interpretation. The seventeen essays shed new light on Greville's poetry, philosophy, and dramatic work. They investigate his examination of monarchy and sovereignty; grace, salvation, and the nature of evil; the power of poetry and the vagaries of desire, and they offer a reconsideration of his reputation and afterlife in his own century, and beyond. The volume explores the connections between poetic form and philosophy, and argues that Greville's poetic experiments and meditations on form convey penetrating, and strikingly original contributions to poetics, political thought, and philosophy. Highlighting stylistic features of his poetic style, such as his mastery of the caesura and of the feminine ending; his love of paradox, ambiguity, and double meanings; his complex metaphoricity and dense, challenging syntax, these essays reveal how Greville's work invites us to revisit and rethink many of the orthodoxies about the culture of post-Reformation England, including the shape of political argument, and the forms and boundaries of religious belief and identity.

About the Author
Russ Leo is Assistant Professor at Princeton University. Katrin Roeder is Lecturer in English Literature and Culture at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Freya Sierhuis is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of York.

Reviews
This is an ambitious book, which successfully makes the case for continuing to study Greville as a poet and thinker in his own right, as an author whose works ought to be indispensable to any study of English Renaissance culture. The range and depth of scholarship in this collection distinguishes it as a landmark in its field. * Richard Wood, Cahiers Elisabethains *
The reader is left not only with an increased appreciation of Greville, but with enriched insight into the political and religious culture of post-Reformation England. An important addition to the literature on the period, as well as on Greville. * B.E. Brandt, CHOICE *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198823445
Author Russ Leo
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 712g
Dimensions(mm) 238mm * 164mm * 27mm