Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English LiteraturePrinceton University Press, 2009 M02 9 - 376 páginas This book examines how English writers from the Elizabethan period to the Restoration transformed and contested the ancient ideal of the virtuous mean. As early modern authors learned at grammar school and university, Aristotle and other classical thinkers praised "golden means" balanced between extremes: courage, for example, as opposed to cowardice or recklessness. By uncovering the enormous variety of English responses to this ethical doctrine, Joshua Scodel revises our understanding of the vital interaction between classical thought and early modern literary culture. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 62
... ethical virtues as habits that preserve a mean between excess and deficiency in actions and emotions. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as in the medieval period, Aristotle's works remained the core of the university ...
... ethical theory is perforce inexact in its general formulations and even more sketchy regarding particular cases of conduct, claims that it is difficult and rare to discern the virtuous mean (NE 2.2.3–5, 2.6.13–14, 2.9.1–2). He argues ...
... ethical discernment, Aristotle himself notes that the panegyrist should praise men's excesses as if they were the proximate virtuous means (1.9.28–29). Many ancient and early modern writ- ers either laud or—more frequently—decry the ...
... ethical virtue as a “mediocrity.” Hobbes replaced the Aristotelian concept with his own supposedly more accurate iden- tification of virtue with behavior that contributed to peaceful order, which in turn entailed identifying virtue ...
... ethical, medical, or career goals, on the other. He also deploys the mean to differentiate between religious and scientific norms, as does Donne to contrast religious and political imperatives. To take another example, some erotic ...
Contenido
1 | |
19 | |
Means and Extremes in Early Modern Georgic | 77 |
Erotic Excess and Early Modern Social Conflicts | 143 |
Moderation and Excess in the SeventeenthCentury Symposiastic Lyric | 197 |
Reimagining Moderation The Miltonic Example | 253 |
Sublime Excess Dull Moderation and Contemporary Ambivalence | 285 |
Notes | 289 |
Index | 353 |