Per Sivefors
Linnaeus University, Department of Languages, Faculty Member
- English Literature, Early Modern Literature, Renaissance Studies, Thomas Nashe, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, and 12 moreWilliam Shakespeare, Visions And Dreams, Early Modern English drama, Early Modern England, Early Modern Europe, Satire, Tudor England, Early modern English literature, Dreams, Shakespeare, Shakespearean Drama, and John Marstonedit
It is hardly controversial to say that the Elizabethan play Sir Thomas More (1592–93?) is insistently preoccupied with issues of surveillance, control and punishment. In its depiction of the Ill May Day Riots in 1517 and the subsequent... more
It is hardly controversial to say that the Elizabethan play Sir Thomas More (1592–93?) is insistently preoccupied with issues of surveillance, control and punishment. In its depiction of the Ill May Day Riots in 1517 and the subsequent downfall of Thomas More, the play represents both More’s role as surveyor of the crowd and a victim of royal surveillance and punishment. However, in its twists and turns of plot Sir Thomas More transcends generalizations about penal justice. While not staging a “pre-panoptic” system of control, the play frequently but ironically thematizes surveillanceas an instrument of power, but it falls short of suggesting that surveillance produces pliable individuals. Instead, Sir Thomas More comes close to suggesting repentance rather than retribution as a model of justice, though this model is also made problematic through the character of Thomas More.
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The present essay suggests that Everard Guilpin’s collection of satirical poetry, Skialetheia (1598), is entrenched in early modern notions of age and masculinity. While criticism has claimed that Guilpin’s satirical persona is mostly... more
The present essay suggests that Everard Guilpin’s collection of satirical poetry, Skialetheia (1598), is entrenched in early modern notions of age and masculinity. While criticism has claimed that Guilpin’s satirical persona is mostly inconsistent and self-contradictory, this essay argues that Skialetheia is structured around a model of progression toward manly self-control. The epigrams, placed before the satires, and the first three satires predominantly rely on flyting, aggression, and a reckless, “youthful” persona whereas the three last satires increasingly come to emphasize distancing, composure, and Stoical as well as proverbial wisdom—features that are consistent with Renaissance constructions of masculinity around notions of self-control. In other words, while Elizabethan satire has often been noted both for its aggressive and violent character and for the youth of the men who mostly wrote it, Skialetheia to some extent demonstrates an aesthetic and moral distancing from such dimensions. In a wider sense, the essay therefore suggests that previous views of Elizabethan satire as consistently “angry” or “low” in style need to be re-considered.
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Verse satire from Roman times and onward draws extensively on gender stereotypes in its depictions of urban and decadent men. While clearly drawing on such literary traditions, Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum (1597–98) spans over a wider... more
Verse satire from Roman times and onward draws extensively on gender stereotypes in its depictions of urban and decadent men. While clearly drawing on such literary traditions, Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum (1597–98) spans over a wider register in emphasising both rural and urban contexts, and in focusing specifically on aspects of husbandry, pedigree and provision. Rather than being simply classical imitation, the failed men of Hall's satires should be understood from the economic context of early modern masculinity, which constituted manhood in terms of pedigree and providing for one's household. Unlike other Elizabethan satire, which predominantly attacks sexual vice as an urban phenomenon, Virgidemiarum depicts flawed manhood in broader terms of failed husbandry. In doing so, the essay contends, Hall's satires re‐enact changes in social structure and in the conceptions of masculinity at the time.
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This anthology chapter offers a reconsideration of the Bishops' Ban in 1599. While the Ban has been considered a far-reaching act of censorship, little is known of its causes. In this chapter I argue that the reasons behind the Ban... more
This anthology chapter offers a reconsideration of the Bishops' Ban in 1599. While the Ban has been considered a far-reaching act of censorship, little is known of its causes. In this chapter I argue that the reasons behind the Ban primarily had to do with the Martin Marprelate controversy earlier in the late 1580s and early 1590s, and that it was not so much the specific contents of the banned works that was targeted as the troublesome character of satire itself. The vogue for verse satire in the late 1590s arguably was linked to apprehensions about the lingering heritage of the Marprelate tracts, and associations of immoderation and slander attached to the religious pamphlets spilled over on to the printed verse satires later in the decade.
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This essay argues that Marlowe's Edward II engages with English history and politics through a metadiscussion of the rhetorical, linguistic and aesthetic foundations of vernacular culture. The play's frequent referencing of Latin, Italian... more
This essay argues that Marlowe's Edward II engages with English history and politics through a metadiscussion of the rhetorical, linguistic and aesthetic foundations of vernacular culture. The play's frequent referencing of Latin, Italian and French suggests a distinction between a public and orthodox understanding of history and politics, and an artful Latinate idiom connected to notions of privacy and Ovidian poetics as well as to non-English, demonised languages. By enriching its modes of expression with snatches of other languages as well as multiplicitous references to specific Latin literary patterns, Edward II privileges the irresponsibly 'private' and hence distances itself from a vernacular construction of public history and affairs.
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The central argument of this anthology chapter is that the dream narratives in Girolamo Cardano’s autobiography De vita proper liber (written 1575) share important characteristics with the didactic and exemplary uses of dreams in late... more
The central argument of this anthology chapter is that the dream narratives in Girolamo Cardano’s autobiography De vita proper liber (written 1575) share important characteristics with the didactic and exemplary uses of dreams in late classical and medieval hagiography. While not a piece of hagiography in itself, Cardano’s book features dreams with a particularly rich indebtedness to Christian and hagiographic devices such as the “upward ascent” narrative also found in saints’ dreams. Moreover, Cardano’s dreams, the Christian element of which has been underplayed by scholars, also posit the dreamer as a mediator between God and audience in ways that my article relates to the exemplary force in divine dreams. Thus, in the extension the article also deals with how to mediate dreams (editing them, writing them down, conferring authority on them) and investigates the senses in which dreams achieved status as “true” or “prophetic”.
Research Interests: Autobiography, Dreams (History), Medieval & Renaissance Hagiography & Didactic Texts, Girolamo Cardano, Dreams, and 4 moreLate Antique Hagiography, The Rhetoric of Confession, Autobiography, Self-Portraiture and the Construction of the Self, Autobiography and lifewriting studies, and Medieval Hagiography
The present article suggests that war and peace are explored in the works of Thomas Nashe as figures for the condition of the writer. Throughout his career, including his troubles with the authorities and his conflict with Gabriel Harvey,... more
The present article suggests that war and peace are explored in the works of Thomas Nashe as figures for the condition of the writer. Throughout his career, including his troubles with the authorities and his conflict with Gabriel Harvey, Nashe makes use of the war metaphor in order to elaborate on the condition of authorship. However, war is also a literal presence in Nashe’s texts, which frequently reference events like the Spanish Armada or the campaign in Ireland. Thus, the article examines the complex interplay between social reality and self-referential metaphor that characterizes Nashe’s use and descriptions of warfare.
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In a passage in Christs Teares over Jerusalem, Thomas Nashe seems to make reference to St. Augustine. I suggest that Nashe instead derived this reference from other works such as Johann Altensteig’s textbook Lexicon theologicum or Gabriel... more
In a passage in Christs Teares over Jerusalem, Thomas Nashe seems to make reference to St. Augustine. I suggest that Nashe instead derived this reference from other works such as Johann Altensteig’s textbook Lexicon theologicum or Gabriel Biel's Sacri canonis missae expositio.
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This article discusses Thomas Nashe’s longest and perhaps most frequently misread work, the religious pamphlet Christs Teares over Jerusalem. While criticism used to dismiss this text as either an aesthetic failure or consider it a hoax,... more
This article discusses Thomas Nashe’s longest and perhaps most frequently misread work, the religious pamphlet Christs Teares over Jerusalem. While criticism used to dismiss this text as either an aesthetic failure or consider it a hoax, the present analysis situates Christs Teares in the context of Nashe’s self-projection as an author. In doing so, it links the religious fervour and frequent instances of prayer in the text as a way for Nashe to position himself in relation to his patron and his audience. Drawing on the intermingling secular and religious meanings of prayer in Nashe’s time, the article suggests that prayer is predominantly configured as petition in Christs Teares and as such it provides Nashe with a position of dejection and humility that at the same time is a source of empowerment. In other words, the article proposes that the religious tone of the work should not be seen as an anomaly but rather a strategy that is integral to Nashe’s authorial persona as represented in Christs Teares and elsewhere.
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Criticism on Thomas Nashe has been notoriously preoccupied with the idea that he had nothing to say. While recent analyses have shown that his works in fact do say lots of specific things about the literary culture of his time, Nashe’s... more
Criticism on Thomas Nashe has been notoriously preoccupied with the idea that he had nothing to say. While recent analyses have shown that his works in fact do say lots of specific things about the literary culture of his time, Nashe’s peculiar form and style remain at the centre of attention. This essay suggests that Nashe’s preoccupation with style is also what invokes a sense of commitment in his readers; by their use of the author’s persona and their often baffling narration, Nashe’s works also force the reader to consider questions of what literature is, why we read it and who has control over it. In other words, the repeated admissions of incompetence and narrative digressions have the result of engaging the readers in exercising their judgement and deliberating on aspects of style, narrative and, generally, what literature is.
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It is frequently pointed out that ”satire” in the English Renaissance was thought to relate to “satyr”, and “satyr play”. Until Isaac Casaubon pointed out in 1605 that the term was derived from “satira” and hence referred to a more subtle... more
It is frequently pointed out that ”satire” in the English Renaissance was thought to relate to “satyr”, and “satyr play”. Until Isaac Casaubon pointed out in 1605 that the term was derived from “satira” and hence referred to a more subtle and civilized mode of expression, early modern English satire was characterized by strong social commentary and direct verbal attacks, especially so in the social and cultural upheaval of the 1590s. However, the confusion of satire and satyr also offered a rich field of exploration of ideas of gender, and I argue in the present paper that verse satire such as John Marston’s in The Scourge of Villanie (1598) utilizes the contaminated genre definition to explore notions of masculinity. Moreover, Marston’s satire on the effeminate manners of courtiers thematizes masculinity – or the lack thereof – as a challenge of political orthodoxy. By representing the targets of his attacks as oversexualized (not only through the “satyr” subtext but in frequent mention of the phallic god Priapus), Marston draws on the conventional idea that sexual over-indulgence leads to effeminacy. At the same time, his satirical representation of the vices of his time through a negotiation of classical patterns in effect challenges conventional taste to such an extent that masculinity per se becomes open to debate. In other words, classical culture did not offer a sure-fire corrective to depravity but a means of questioning current gender norms, in political as well as literary terms.
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This chapter historicizes Shakespeare's Richard III by investigating Renaissance dream theories in relation to notions of conscience. Its basic argument is that it is an increasingly ambiguous status of conscience at the time that pushes... more
This chapter historicizes Shakespeare's Richard III by investigating Renaissance dream theories in relation to notions of conscience. Its basic argument is that it is an increasingly ambiguous status of conscience at the time that pushes dreams in the direction of a psychologizing approach: dreams as revealing truths about the human self after the Reformation. Hence, the chapter claims, the nightmares of Richard III anticipate the irresolution between supernatural and psychological causes that was also to characterize Gothic fiction in the 18th century.
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This chapter examines the role of the prefatory material of Thomas More's Utopia such as the sample alphabet of the Utopian language, which was included in most early Latin editions but underwent various transformations in the English... more
This chapter examines the role of the prefatory material of Thomas More's Utopia such as the sample alphabet of the Utopian language, which was included in most early Latin editions but underwent various transformations in the English versions of the text from the mid-sixteenth through the early seventeenth century. The chapter suggests that while the changes and redactions in the first English editions in many ways reflect the humanist aspiration of the translator, Ralph Robinson, the later editions from the 1590s and onward mirror the changing status of the More family and particularly a strong sense of nostalgia for its past greatness.
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This essay proposes a new reading of the physician and astrologist Simon Forman’s dream of Queen Elizabeth, recorded in 1597. While previous criticism has examined this dream for its political implications and its connections to other... more
This essay proposes a new reading of the physician and astrologist Simon Forman’s dream of Queen Elizabeth, recorded in 1597. While previous criticism has examined this dream for its political implications and its connections to other literary texts, Sivefors contextualizes it from the point of view of early modern dream theory and subjectivity. The basic argument is that Forman’s dream both invests dreams with predictive value and anticipates a more distinctly modern, individualizing, anti-metaphysical tendency in dream interpretation. This is crucially reinforced by an emphasis on sexuality – male, hetero, “normal” – as a defining characteristic of the individual. Forman’s dream is in line with a general tendency for dreams to lose in epistemological prestige in the 17th century – a tendency that increasingly puts the emphasis on the individual’s inner life rather than on implications of angelic messages or general predictions of the future. What is more, the individual’s sexuality and sexual orientation are at the focus of this change, thus in important ways foreshadowing later developments in, e.g., Freudian psychoanalysis. The essay hence maps a complex series of changes in attitudes to dream interpretation as well as to sexuality in the Early Modern period.
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This essay argues that the second of Marlowe's Tamburlaine plays conflates two biblical narratives—those of the Tower of Babel and the fall of Babylon. While this conflation was widespread in early modern culture, Marlowe's play—unlike... more
This essay argues that the second of Marlowe's Tamburlaine plays conflates two biblical narratives—those of the Tower of Babel and the fall of Babylon. While this conflation was widespread in early modern culture, Marlowe's play—unlike many other representations of these narratives—does not suggest reconciliation or salvation as an alternative to the tower or the fall of man. Instead, through its complex response to theological, political, and linguistic issues, Tamburlaine 2 depicts a world in which Babel and Babylon cannot be redeemed.
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This essay argues that the Elizabethan author Thomas Nashe’s (1567–1601) erotic poem »The Choise of Valentines« explores early modern senses of distinction between manuscript writing and print. In his dedication and in subsequent... more
This essay argues that the Elizabethan author Thomas Nashe’s (1567–1601) erotic poem »The Choise of Valentines« explores early modern senses of distinction between manuscript writing and print. In his dedication and in subsequent responses to critique against the poem, Nashe invokes a sense of intimacy with his patron and his audience – an intimacy that is associated in his texts with manuscript writing but is enacted by references to, and directly in, the medium of print. In other words, »The Choise of Valentines« constructs a fiction of privacythat is rhetorically and commercially exploited in the medium of print – which is, in turn, constructed as the public opposite of the intimate, private medium of manuscript writing.
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This essay deals with Thomas Nashe’s pamphlet on nightmares, The Terrors of the Night (1594). It argues that Nashe’swork, instead of developing the didactic and moralizing potential of dreamaccounts, explores the diversity and moral... more
This essay deals with Thomas Nashe’s pamphlet on
nightmares, The Terrors of the Night (1594). It argues that Nashe’swork, instead of developing the didactic and moralizing potential of dreamaccounts, explores the diversity and moral ambiguity of dreams through its own narrative. Rejecting the common early modern view of dream narration as an act of divination which intervenes ethically in the world, the work also refrains from investing the act of narrating dreams with a negative moral or political value. Thus, contextualizing the work from the point of view of early modern dream analyses and interpretations, this essay suggests that Nashe’s work exposes the problems in seeing literary texts as didactic containers rather than arenas of competing ethical values.
nightmares, The Terrors of the Night (1594). It argues that Nashe’swork, instead of developing the didactic and moralizing potential of dreamaccounts, explores the diversity and moral ambiguity of dreams through its own narrative. Rejecting the common early modern view of dream narration as an act of divination which intervenes ethically in the world, the work also refrains from investing the act of narrating dreams with a negative moral or political value. Thus, contextualizing the work from the point of view of early modern dream analyses and interpretations, this essay suggests that Nashe’s work exposes the problems in seeing literary texts as didactic containers rather than arenas of competing ethical values.
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This essay situates William Webbe's treatise A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) within the context of early modern debates on vernacular literature. Its claim is basically that Webbe's work is caught up between the classicist stance of... more
This essay situates William Webbe's treatise A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) within the context of early modern debates on vernacular literature. Its claim is basically that Webbe's work is caught up between the classicist stance of mid-century humanism as represented by for example Roger Ascham and the later, more antiquarian and consistently nationalist positions of the early seventeenth century (exemplified in my discussion by Samuel Daniel's A Defence of Ryme, 1603). In other words, the essay traces some ideologically significant aspects of the discussion on vernacular literature in early modern England by focussing on an author who occupies a liminal position in this development.
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This essay argues that Christopher Marlowe's translation of Ovid's Amores thematizes movement and visuality in a way that can be strongly related to Marlowe's other, dramatic work. While previous research has been strongly focussed on... more
This essay argues that Christopher Marlowe's translation of Ovid's Amores thematizes movement and visuality in a way that can be strongly related to Marlowe's other, dramatic work. While previous research has been strongly focussed on Marlowe as a dramatist and more recent criticism has come to contextualize his drama from his poetry, the present essay suggests that Marlowe's poetry and translations should be read more emphatically in the light of his drama, as the Amores translations consistently veer towards movement and visuality in ways that can truly be seen as "theatrical".
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This essay argues that Thomas Nashe used the writings of Ovid to construct his own authorial persona as it is represented in especially the religious pamphlet Christ's Tears over Jerusalem (1593). Special attention is paid to, firstly,... more
This essay argues that Thomas Nashe used the writings of Ovid to construct his own authorial persona as it is represented in especially the religious pamphlet Christ's Tears over Jerusalem (1593). Special attention is paid to, firstly, the gender dimension of this persona with respect to early modern masculinity and, secondly, the urban dimension of the intertextual connection to Ovid.
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Engaging with Elizabethan understandings of masculinity, this book examines representations of manhood during the short-lived vogue for verse satire in the 1590s, by poets like John Donne, John Marston, Everard Guilpin and Joseph Hall.... more
Engaging with Elizabethan understandings of masculinity, this book examines representations of manhood during the short-lived vogue for verse satire in the 1590s, by poets like John Donne, John Marston, Everard Guilpin and Joseph Hall. While criticism has often used categorical adjectives like "angry" and "Juvenalian" to describe these satires, this book argues that they engage with early modern ideas of manhood in a conflicted and contradictory way that is frequently at odds with patriarchal norms even when they seem to defend them. The book examines the satires from a series of contexts of masculinity such as husbandry and early modern understandings of age, self-control and violence, and suggests that the images of manhood represented in the satires often exist in tension with early modern standards of manhood. Beyond the specific case studies, while satire has often been assumed to be a "male" genre or mode, this is the first study to engage more in depth with the question of how satire is invested with ideas and practices of masculinity.
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The present volume is a continuation of the collection Urban Preoccupations: Mental and Material Landscapes (2007), which, like it, grows out of the research project Tolerance and the City. While the earlier volume explored early modern... more
The present volume is a continuation of the collection Urban Preoccupations: Mental and Material Landscapes (2007), which, like it, grows out of the research project Tolerance and the City. While the earlier volume explored early modern city culture predominantly in terms of cultural difference and its representations, the present volume emphasizes the ways in which early modern city culture is a locus of encounters. More specifically, it focuses on what recent scholars have described as a «lived cultural experience»: the sense in which urban existence was seen as inherently unstable or threatening, and the extent to which this perception was dealt with in art or literature. What emerges, as the contributions testify to, is a multi-faceted picture in which separations and boundaries are continually exposed and «productively destabilized». In addition to engaging with the tropes and figures used for the early modern city in works of fiction and art, the volume examines the social and cultural boundaries established in and between cities, but also the ways in which the city itself could be said to constitute an (unstable) boundary. The organization of the volume into two parts, Imagining cities and Encountering cities, accentuates its double theme: investigating the representation and perception of the early modern city together with the crossing and questioning of social and cultural boundaries that emerged in such imagined spaces.