Breaking the Vacuum : Ricardian and Henrician Ovidianism

Author / Editor
Simpson, James.

Title
Breaking the Vacuum : Ricardian and Henrician Ovidianism

Published
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29: 325-55, 1999.

Description
Literary and historical periodization conventionally depends on viewing the lyrics of Wyatt and Surrey (for example) as distinctive and innovative, expressing a characteristically "Renaissance" divided self that is isolated from political and social realities. However, this self-fashioning is less a feature of Petrarchan humanism than of the Ovidian elegiac mode, as evidenced by late-medieval writings such as Pity, BD, and especially Gower's Confessio Amantis.

Chaucer Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.
Book of the Duchess.
Complaint unto Pity.