Reading popular romance in early modern England
With the expansion of the publishing industry between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, reading for pleasure became possible for an increasing number of people, not just the wealthy and educated. The growth of the book trade produced, alongside elite literature, a parallel popular literature. Lori Humphrey Newcomb examines the proliferation of romances in early modern England, as well as their vilification by elite writers. Using as her case study Robert Greene's Pandosto (1585), an Elizabethan prose romance that inspired Shakespeare's late play, The Winter's Tale, she shows that the two forms of literature influenced each other profoundly. Because Shakespeare's works are considered timeless literary achievements, critics have distanced his plays from his romantic sources--a separation that until now has gone unquestioned. Newcomb undermines this assumption, providing a fascinating account of an early bestseller's incarnations over 250 years of literary history
Criticism, interpretation, etc
1 online resource (xiv, 332 pages) : illustrations
9780231504850, 9780231123785, 9780231123792, 0231504853, 0231123787, 0231123795
51973281
"Growne so ordinarie": producing Robert Greene's Pandosto and Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, 1585-92
Social things: commodifying Pandosto, 1592-1640
Material alteration: re-commodifying Dorastus and Fawnia and The Winter's tale, 1623-1843
The romance of service: The readers of Dorastus and Fawnia, 1615-1762
English