The Ludic Self in Seventeenth-Century English Literature

by Anna K. Nardo

This book argues that play offered Hamlet, John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Robert Burton, and Sir Thomas Browne a way to live within the contradictions and conflicts of late Renaissance life by providing a new stance for the self. Grounding its argument in recent theories of play and in a historical analysis that sees the seventeenth century as a point of crisis in the formation of the western self, the author demonstrates how play helped...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791407217
• ISBN13: 9780791407219
• Release Date: September 1991
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 263 Pages