Romance for Sale in Early Modern England: The Rise of Prose FictionThe major claim made by this study is that early modern English prose fiction self-consciously invented a new form of literary culture in which professional writers created books to be printed and sold to anonymous readers. It further claims that this period's narrative innovations emerged not solely from changes in early modern culture like print & the book market, but also from the rediscovery of a forgotten late classical text from North Africa, Heliodorus's Aethiopian History. In making these claims, Steve Mentz provides a comprehensive historicist and formalist account of prose romance, the most important genre of Elizabethan fiction. He explores how authors and publishers of prose fiction in late 16th-century England produced books that combined traditional narrative forms with a dynamic new understanding of the relationship between text and audience. |
Contents
Early Modern Romance and the Middlebrow Reader | 17 |
Heliodorus and Early Modern Literary Culture | 47 |
Sidneys New Arcadia | 73 |
Greenes Romances | 105 |
Greene and the Novella | 123 |
Lodge versus Greene | 151 |
Greene and Nashe | 173 |
Greenes Ghosts and the Middlebrow Author | 207 |
| 221 | |
| 253 | |
Other editions - View all
Romance for Sale in Early Modern England: The Rise of Prose Fiction Steve Mentz Limited preview - 2017 |
Romance for Sale in Early Modern England: The Rise of Prose Fiction Steve Mentz Limited preview - 2017 |
Romance for Sale in Early Modern England: The Rise of Prose Fiction Steve Mentz No preview available - 2017 |
Common terms and phrases
Aethiopian History Amadis of Gaul appears Arcadia audience Calasiris Calasiris's career characters Chariclea chastity chivalric romance classical courtiers critics cross-dressing culture Diamante Diamante's divine Early Modern England early modern English edition Elizabethan fiction Elizabethan Prodigals Elizabethan Prose Fiction Elizabethan prose romance Elizabethan romance emphasizes English English Studies epic Euphues Euphuism front matter Further citations Gascoigne Gascoigne's genre Greek romance Greene's Groatsworth Helgerson Heliodoran romance Heliodorus Heliodorus's hero heroine Homer human humanist Italian Jack Jack's literary Literature Lodge Lodge's London Lyly Lyly's Mamillia Margarite marriage Melanchthon Menaphon middlebrow moral Musidorus narrative Nashe's Novel novella Odyssey Old Arcadia Oxford passivity Penelope Pettie's Philautus Philip Sidney Philoclea plot popular published Pyrocles readers readership reading Renaissance repentance rhetorical Robert Greene Robin the Devil Rosalynde Saladyne Sephastia Shakespeare shipwreck Sir Philip Sidney story Studies suggests tale Theagenes Thomas Lodge Thomas Nashe Unfortunate Traveler virtue women writers Zelmane Zelmane's