Digressive Voices In Early Modern English Literature

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature This page intentionally left blank Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature ANNE COTTERILL 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Anne Cotterill 2004 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–926117–2 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Hope Services (Abingdon) Ltd. Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk In memory of my brother, Charles Fogle Cotterill This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements Many have helped me along the way of this book, and I can only begin to thank them here. First, Digressive Voices exists because Steven Zwicker at Washington University introduced me to the world of Restoration England and to Marvell, Milton, and Dryden. An extraordinary, and extraordinarily generous, scholar and teacher, Steve has encouraged my ideas, followed my digressions, tirelessly strengthened my prose, and for over ten years offered the sustained guidance and friendship that have helped me to reshape an intellectual and literary life. I continue to learn from his creative energy. In my initial semester of graduate school, after years of living overseas, I was hooked into literary study again by Joseph Loewenstein who became the English Renaissance for me in all of its copia and complexity. I am indebted particularly to his pointing me to the study of rhetoric. Derek Hirst first showed me how superbly a historian can read literary texts and the range and interest of seventeenth-century historical materials. He has been most generous and steady with his encouragement. I am grateful to Rutgers University and to Rutgers’s Department of Literatures in English for a year’s sabbatical to pursue this project. Many colleagues have read patiently and critically portions or all of the manuscript and helped me to pull the thread that leads through these digressions: Emily Bartels, Wesley Brown, Chris Chism, Ann Coiro, Stacy Klein, Ron Levao, Bridget Lyons, Michael McKeon, Jackie Miller, and Carla Yanni. Mary Bly corrected many pages and has been an example of scholarly and