Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey

A Life
Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-0-19-818625-0
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 466 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 697 g

The first comprehensive biography of Henry Howard, Poet Earl of Surrey, this influential book fills a major gap in the history of early modern British culture. Sessions's narrative combines historical scholarship with close readings of poetic texts and Tudor paintings to explore Surrey's unique life. The first cousin of Queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard (and an influence on his young cousin the Princess Elizabeth), he was beheaded in 1547 on the orders of Henry VIII. Surrey embodied the contradictions of the courtier's role, through his standing both as a representative of the older nobility and heir to the greatest title outside the royal family, and as a poet who wrote innovative texts and created the most enduring poetic forms in England, the English sonnet and blank verse.

More and more, critics and scholars have called for a more contemporary and wider assessment of his role in Tudor society. Sessions uses Surrey's redefinition of the role of Tudor courtier through his poems, his unique portraits, his military campaigns, and his political presence, to reveal how he created the first image in England of the Renaissance courtier. Surrey is also shown to embody the rather more modern image of the poet who writes and invents in the midst of radical violence.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sessions, W. A.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politik: Sachbuch, Politikerveröffentlichungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Biographien & Autobiographien: Historisch, Politisch, Militärisch
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder England, UK, Irland: Regional & Stadtgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Preface by David Starkey

- Foreword

- Prologue

- Part I.

- 1: The fathers: two battles

- 2: The mother

- 3: The other Henry: Windsor and France

- 4: The deaths of 1536

- Part II.

- 5: Mount Surrey

- 6: The audience at Surrey House: lyrics and lives

- 7: The Countess of Surrey

- 8: Imprisonments

- 9: A new body of honour: Sir Thomas Wyatt

- 10: The origins of blank verse

- 11: 'Lieutenant General of the King'

- 12: The shame of St Etienne

- Part III.

- 13: Surrey's last portrait

- 14: The final days

- 15: 'Retailed to posterity': a conclusion

- Notes

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

(Regents' Professor of English, Georgia State University, USA)