Guilty Creatures: Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorship

This study examines how Renaissance poets conceive the theme of killing as a specifically representational and interpretive form of violence. Closely reading both major poets and lesser known authors, Dennis Kezar explores the ethical self-consciousness and accountability that attend literary killing, paying particular attention to the ways in which this reflection indicates the poet's understanding of his audience. Kezar explores the concept of authorial guilt elicited by violent representation in poems including Skelton's Phyllyp Sparowe, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the multi-authored Witch of Edmonton, and Milton's Samson Agonistes. In each case, he reflects on the poetic process and explores the ethical ramifications for both author and audience. In emphasizing the social, literary, and historical consequences of 'killing poems,' this volume further advances scholarship in historicist and speech-act theories of the early modern period.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1 Courting Heresy and Taking the Subject: John Skelton's Precedent 2 Spenser and the Poetics of Indiscretion 3 The Properties of Shakespeare's Globe 4 The Witch of Edmonton and the Guilt of Possession 5 Samson's Death by Theater and Milton's Art of Dying 6 Guilt and the Constitution of Authorship in Henry V and the Antitheatrical Elegies of W.S. and Milton Index

About the Author :
Dennis Kezar is Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah. Most recently, he edited Solon and Thespis: Law and Theater in Renaissance England (University of Notre Dame Press).

Review :
"[Suggests] that Renaissance artists were often conscious of the potentially destructive powerof art, and that this self-consciousness shapes their work and understanding of their own social roles as artists. This attention to the 'responsibility for the other' provides us with a new understanding that brings us closer in sensibility to the early modern period than we have been in recent years." --Shakespeare Quarterly "Guilty Creatures, a courageous exercise in criticism, is indeed . . . eclectic-not only in its critical practices but also in its reading methods. Kezar moves with considerable facility from the 'killing poems' that are his focus across the canon of English Renaissance literature, drawing in interpretative bits and pieces that elucidate and complicate his literary analyses."--Renaissance Quarterly "Demonstrates a deep and broad familiarity with . . . [each] author's entire corpus . . . a significant contribution to the study of Skelton, Spenser, Shakespeare, Dekker/Ford/Rowley, and Milton--no small feat."--Early Modern Literary Studies