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Ovid and Masculinity in English Renaissance Literature. John S. Garrison and Goran Stanivukovic, eds. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020. viii + 316 pp. $75.

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(1575). Heffernan points to changes between these two editions and discusses the elaborate narrative fictions and authorial performance that are differently promoted in each text. Chapter 4 discusses English sonnet… Click to show full abstract

(1575). Heffernan points to changes between these two editions and discusses the elaborate narrative fictions and authorial performance that are differently promoted in each text. Chapter 4 discusses English sonnet books, the fashion for which reached its peak in the 1590s with Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella (1591, 1597). In printed sonnet books, which often include dozens, even hundreds, of poems, numbers replace verbal titles; Heffernan’s attempt to provide a “microhistory of poetic numbering” (150) is valiant if occasionally repetitive. It is amusing, however, to note the occasional mixing of Arabic with Roman numerals and other peculiarities. In the case of Henry Constable’s Diana, the titles, headings, and framing devices found in the manuscripts are entirely omitted in print, and numbers are given for each (English) poem in Italian. Numbered sonnets read together in a sequence could also create “conditions for fictions of poetic emotion to exceed the limit of a single sonnet” (127). Astrophel later appears appended to The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia (1598), corrected from a manuscript in possession of Sidney’s sister, Mary Sidney Herbert; in this case, the sonnets are accompanied by Sidney’s songs, which changes the reader’s experience of the text. Nineteen sonnet books follow Astrophel and Stella (cited on a table, 144–45) until the vogue dies out. Chapter 5 begins with discussion of the return of the manuscript as the preferred form for poetry in the 1620s and 1630s and what this meant for the transmission and publication of the poetry of John Donne. Heffernan makes an interesting case for the influence of John Marriot’s Poems, By J. D. (1633), a collection of Donne, on Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-speare, Gent. (1640), an octavo put together by the stationer John Benson. Heffernan’s book is a useful addition to the larger history of print and demonstrates her extensive reading and careful consideration of works both famous and obscure.

Keywords: renaissance; sonnet books; masculinity english; sonnet; ovid masculinity; john

Journal Title: Renaissance Quarterly
Year Published: 2023

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