The Love Aesthetics of Maurice Sceve: Poetry and Struggle

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title The Love Aesthetics of Maurice Sceve: Poetry and Struggle
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Jerry C. Nash
SeriesCambridge Studies in French
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:224
Dimensions(mm): Height 216,Width 139
Category/GenreLiterary studies - c 1500 to c 1800
Literary studies - poetry and poets
ISBN/Barcode 9780521025621
ClassificationsDewey:841.3
Audience
Professional & Vocational
Illustrations Worked examples or Exercises

Publishing Details

Publisher Cambridge University Press
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publication Date 20 April 2006
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

This book reassesses the love poetry of Maurice Sceve from a phenomenological viewpoint. It calls into question the traditional critical view of Sceve as a poet consumed by the anguish and darkness of unrequited love, and frustrated by poetic and erotic quests which lead him nowhere. Professor Nash argues instead that the conflicting forces in Sceve's poetic expression of love (light and dark, night and day, heaven and hell) lead ultimately to a sense of equilibrium and a transcendent paradisal state, and that the poet's struggle is actually directed towards this coming to terms with the meaning of ineffable love. Contemplation and portrayal of the ineffable are shown to constitute the central and unifying concern of this compelling body of Renaissance love poetry.

Reviews

"In this thought-provoking and refreshing study, Nash has accomplished on the critical level what he portrays Sceve as having attained in the poetic and aesthetic realm. It is a work which will be valuable, not only to specialists of Sceve and Renaissance poetry, but to all who are interested in investigating that mysterious and complicated intellectual, sensual, and aesthetic process which results in the creation of poetry." Renaissance Quarterly