Tottel's Miscellany, first printed in 1557 at the height of the
persecution of Protestants during Queen Mary's reign, is the first
anthology of English poetry. It showcases the aspirations of English
poets to match the quality of verse observed in their counterparts on
the Continent, foremost Petrarch and Ariosto. The anthology testifies to
the efforts made by the English to carve out their own version of what
we have come to call Humanism, a movement that swept across Northern
Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries.
With its variety of genres, from elegies to descriptions of battles, the
anthology will help us arrive at a better understanding of the literary
culture of Elizabethan England. As Amanda Holton and Tom MacFaul point
out in their introduction to the Penguin edition, "Tottel's Miscellany
was [...] an immensely influential book which set a trend for putting
into wider circulation lyrics which had previously circulated only in
manuscript." (xii)
We will discuss the context of this anthology, in particular the advent
of print but also the religious strive during the Marian reign, and we
will appreciate the aesthetic quality of the poetry.
Please note that prior to the first session you must have purchased a
copy of the following edition (only this edition will do!):
Tottel's Miscellany: Songs and Sonnets of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Others. Eds. Amanda Holton and Tom MacFaul. London: Penguin, 2012 [and later].
- Dozent/in: Felix Sprang