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Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture

Untutored LinesThe Making of the English Epyllion

By William P Weaver

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About this book

A compelling cultural reinterpretation of humanist discourses of boyhood

The English epyllion, the highly erotic mythological verse that swept the London literary scene in the 1590s, is as much about rhetoric as about sex. So argues William Weaver in this fascinating study of Renaissance education and poetry. Rhetoric, moreover, is erotic. Far being merely formal, rhetoric is the key to deciphering the cultural meanings of an enigmatic genre.

Weaver attends to one of the epyllion's defining dramas: boys in transition to adulthood. Whereas recent studies of the epyllion have posited sexuality as the primary, even exclusive, means of representing beautiful boys, Weaver discovers that Renaissance male sexuality itself is an effect of a disciplinary drama of pedagogical transition from boyhood to adolescence, grammar to rhetoric. This drama of differentiation, lucidly expounded by Weaver, is at the heart of the erotic epyllia of Shakespeare, Marlowe and their imitators.

Key Features
  • Focuses on six poems written between 1592 and 1594, looking to the most inventive period of the English epyllion
  • Documents previously unknown sources of Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis
  • Makes the first cultural critique of the Renaissance progymnasmata, the popular rhetorical exercises
  • Shows the vital connections between English poetry and continental rhetoric
  • Productively complements histories of sexuality, queer theory and feminist criticism

Reviews

Weaver’s careful study of the making of the epyllion opens up further lines of inquiry.
Untutored Lines pursues a valuable line of inquiry, paying close attention to a previously unexamined historical context of this genre and thereby providing a fresh view of these texts.
This book offers a highly original rewriting of the so-called minor epic in the Renaissance, linking it to the rite of passage in the humanist school while offering arresting observations on everything from Shakespearean sources to the reception of Ovid in the English Renaissance. A must read for historians of rhetoric, education, and early modern literature.
William Weaver's book is a learned contribution to the growing reinvestigation of humanist pedagogy. He draws much-needed attention to an under-examined, but influential, school text - Aphthonius's Progymnasmata - in ways that deepen our understanding of the connection between rhetorical training and masculinity in Ovidian minor epics.
William Weaver's book is a learned contribution to the growing reinvestigation of humanist pedagogy. He draws much-needed attention to an under-examined, but influential, school text - Aphthonius's Progymnasmata - in ways that deepen our understanding of the connection between rhetorical training and masculinity in Ovidian minor epics.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction; Rites of passage; Scenes of performance: 1. Progymnasmata: Humanist Rites of Passage; The progymnasmata as an introduction to the art of rhetoric; Disciplinary boundaries in the English grammar school; Literary exercise between the disciplines; From discursive plenitude to disciplinary correction; Part I. Rudiments of Eloquence: Boyhood; 2. Fabula: Observing 'Amorous Rites' in Hero and Leander; Musaeus among the rudiments of eloquence; Marlowe's paraphrase; Leander in the scene of culture; Puberty rites and the English epyllion; 3. Chreia: Making Themes in Venus and Adonis; Boyhood study; Boyhood style; 'The lesson is but plain'; Venus' frustrated banquet; 4. Narratiuncula: Coming of Age in Oenone and Paris; Vivid narration; Paris at the crossroads; Paris in the upper forms; Irony, pathos, and the 'courteous reader'; Part II. First Exercises: Adolescence; 5. Narratio and Confirmatio: Forensic Performance in Lucrece; Adolescent study and style; Lucrece's narratio; Night, opportunity, and time; Troy and the perjured self; Lucrece's confirmatio; 6. Encomium: Antinous as Lord of Misrule in Orchestra; Aphthonian man; Tedious praise; Misrule; Poetic rule; 7. Thesis: Controlling Speech in Cephalus and Procris; 'Methinks the man amendeth the matter much'; Man, horse, and dogs; On contrarieties he answer made; Secret muse; Epilogue: Jesus' First Exercises in Paradise Regained; Appendix; Notes.
About the author

William P Weaver

William P. Weaver is an assistant professor of literature in the Honors College of Baylor University, where he teaches Great Texts. His articles on Renaissance poetry and rhetoric have appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly, Studies in Philology, Spenser Studies, and Rhetorica.

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