The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia and the Invention of English Literature (PDF)

JOEL B. DAVIS Associate Professor of English at Stetson University, USA.

'Davis has written a fascinating, illuminating book. Rather than focusing on a single text supposedly representing Sir Philip Sidney's 'true' intentions, Davis examines the thematics of each individual issue of the Arcadia and Astrophil and Stella. Davis then examines how Elizabethan sonneteers and polemicists used Sidney's name for their own purposes. Brilliantly combining literary history, textual scholarship, metrical analysis, and intense close-reading, Davis has irrevocably changed Sidney scholarship as well as providing a model for how 'un-editing' early modern texts provides fascinating, revisionary criticism.' - Peter C. Herman, Professor, San Diego State University and author of Destablizing Milton: 'Paradise Lost' and the Poetics of Incertitude

'Davis's new book makes a significant contribution to both the textual history and the reception history of Sir Philip Sidney and the Sidney circle through carefully and intelligently reconstructing the contexts in which the poet's writings first made it into print. Davis not only offers valuable and original insights into the place of Sidney's publications within early modern book history, but he reveals the true extent of what amounted to a competition to represent Sidneyfollowing his death, bothby his immediate literary heirs and by modern critics and commentators. This book leads us to revise how we read, interpret and conceive of Sidney's printed works.' - Matthew Woodcock, Senior Lecturerin Literature, University of East Anglia and author of Fairy in the Faerie Queene: Renaissance Elf-Fashioning and Elizabethan Myth-Making

'A learned and provocative study of the contexts and textual states of the works associated with Sidney and the idea of 'Sidney.' Davis's powerful reading sets the Arcadia in all its forms within an unfolding succession of literary, commercial, and political worlds.' - Jason Powell, Assistant Professor of English, Saint Joseph's University