| Elizabethan poets were intent on establishing a national literature, but England did not have suitable literary precursors to link them to the classical past. Therefore, English poets invented a poetic genealogy for themselves, erecting Sir Philip Sidney, after his death in 1587, as the first precursor of English poetry. The sudden, yet persuasive, founding of English literary genealogy was inspired partly by arguments regarding the ancient origins of poetry and partly by the sociological impulse to establish a pedigree, which was so much a part of Elizabethan courtly life. Just as courtiers strove to establish the ancient roots of their line, poets in this period began to cobble together a literary family tree.;Chapter 1 considers the influence of Boccaccio's De Genealogia Deorum Gentilium first on sixteenth-century Continental theorists, including Minturno, Tasso, and Ronsard, and then on theories of the origins of poetry in England, focusing on Sir Thomas Elyot, John Rainolds, Stephen Gosson, and Philip Sidney. Chapter 2 examines the origins of Sidney's canonization as the first precursor of English poetry. These origins are most pronounced in the vernacular elegies for Sidney that proliferated in the decade following his death. Whereas the earliest elegists describe the dead knight almost exclusively as a patron and soldier, the later elegists focus on Sidney as a poet. Chapter 3 explores Spenser's contribution to the myth of Sidney as the first poet of the English tradition. The chapter considers "Astrophel" in detail, paying close attention to Spenser's attempt to engineer his own ambivalent descent from Sidney. Chapter 4 concentrates on Jonson's concerns regarding literary genealogy. Jonson was one of the first writers to become skeptical about the Sidney myth, though he recognized that need to use Sidney as poetic antecedent. Chapter 5 is an analysis of Milton's attitude toward literary genealogy. Milton is unconcerned with rescuing the past from the maw of medieval obscurity. Unlike Spenser and Johnson, who struggle to establish literary antecedents from whom they can descend, Milton struggles to overcome his literary past. By suppressing the need to erect a precursor, Milton permanently changes the idea of English literary descent. |
