Digressive voices in early modern English literature

Description:

"To digress in seventeenth-century England carried a range of meaning associated with deviation or departure. Anne Cotterill looks afresh at major nondramatic texts by Donne, Marvell, Browne, Milton, and Dryden, whose digressive speakers are haunted by personal and public uncertainty. She demonstrates that early modern writers trained in verbal contest developed richly labyrinthine voices that captured the ambiguities of political occasion and aristocratic patronage, while anatomizing enemies and mourning personal loss. Turning current sensitivity toward the silenced voice a new direction, Cotterill argues that rhetorical amplitude might suggest anxieties about speech and attack for men forced to be competitive yet circumspect as they made their voices heard."--Jacket.

subjects: Ambiguity in literature,  Ambivalence in literature,  Anxiety in literature,  Digression (Rhetoric) in literature,  English literature,  History and criticism,  Rhetoric,  Uncertainty in literature,  English language,  English literature, history and criticism, early modern, 1500-1700,  Littérature anglaise,  Histoire et critique,  Digression (Rhétorique) dans la littérature,  Ambivalence dans la littérature,  Incertitude dans la littérature,  Ambiguïté dans la littérature,  Angoisse dans la littérature,  Anglais (Langue),  Rhétorique

Places: English language

Times: Early modern, 1500-1700