Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Criticism and Compliment examines the poems, plays and masques of the three figures who succeeded Ben Jonson as authors of court entertainments in the England of Charles I. The courtly literature of Caroline England has been dismissed by critics and characterised by historians as propaganda for Charles I's absolutism penned by sycophantic hirelings. Kevin Sharpe questions the assumptions on which these evaluations have been based.
Table of Contents
List of illustrations; Preface and acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; 1. Culture and politics, court and country: assumptions and problems, questions and suggestions; 2. Sir William Davenant and the drama of love and passion; 3. Thomas Carew and the poetry of love and nature; 4. Aurelian Townshend and the poetry of natural innocence; 5. The Caroline court masque; 6. Criticism and compliment: the politics of love; Index.