Bøger af Antonia Southern

Courtly love and feminism are strange bedfellows, the one a controversial literary concept, and the other a continuing crusade. Both can be taken seriously or ridiculed. In this incisive book, Antonia Southern tries to do both with both. Courtly Love focuses a feminist lens on fourteen authors, some well-known and some less so. They aimed variously to entertain, amuse, instruct, make money, or please themselves. Marie de France is the supreme example of the last category. Sir Thomas Malory wrote in prison and needed to pass the time. Christine de Pizan wrote to make a living for herself and her family. The Knight of La Tour-Landry wrote advice for his own daughters. Sir Philip Sidney wrote for his sister and her friends. Chrétien de Troyes and Andrew Capellanus had patrons to please, and so sometimes did Geoffrey Chaucer. A historian unrepentantly trespassing in the verdant fields of English literature, Southern rejects the concept of "the Death of the Author" and the divorce of authors from their writing and seeks to understand them on their own terms.

Examines the life of Edward Alleyn, the sixteenth century stage actor who, among a multitude of lead roles, performed as Tamburlaine, Dr Faustus, and Barabas in the work of Christopher Marlowe, and who was praised by Queen Elizabeth I herself.

Provides an historical biography of the multi-faceted and controversial Sir John Harington of Kelston, courtier, place-seeker, writer, inventor satirist and would-be Bishop of Dublin, who lived in times euphemistically described by contemporaries as 'tricky', and who deserved to be better known and understood for his great gifts and achievements.

This research monograph is a long needed one volume approach to not only the subject but to the extensive contributions to English religious history made by Duffy, MacCulloch, Wormsley, Haigh and a number of others. Its great strength is positing an armature of viviparous politics and social tensions that continually broke down attempts at a single vision for Anglicanism despite all official Church and State efforts.