rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    non sort: The
    title: art of pity
    sub title: aesthetics, ethics, and compassion in Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare
  name:
    name part: St. Hilaire, Danielle A.
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: ohu
    date issued: 2025
    copyright date: 2025
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: viii, 168 pages ; 23 cm.
  abstract: The late 16th and early 17th centuries in England were a time of substantial anxiety over the value of reading and writing literature. The Art of Pity argues that English early modern literature made a powerful case for the ability of literature to provide ethical instruction by engaging our emotions. Contemporary explanations of how literature could do so, however, were various and faltering. Writers like Sidney and Spenser insisted in their prose that poetry could, in Spenser's words, "fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline" because of its aesthetic power. Yet their poetry demonstrated skepticism of the notion that aesthetic delight provided a vehicle for ethical instruction. Meanwhile, Shakespeare explored varying models of how drama affects its audience, grappling with the question of whether our emotional responses construct or merely reveal our ethical dispositions. These writers' works embody the tensions of their historical moment, suspended between classical and medieval philosophy and Enlightenment thought. In this thoughtfully researched and beautifully written study, Danielle St. Hilaire argues that we can find frameworks for understanding the intersection of emotion, ethics and literature that unite modern discourses of aesthetic autonomy with seemingly incompatible ethical theories that have largely fallen out of contemporary discussions regarding the value of literature.
  table of contents: Sidney betwen two worlds : pity, delight, and the failure of instrumental aesthetics -- Virtuous pity and Spenser's aesthetic doubt : the rise of literary autonomy -- Alternate realities : Shakespearean aesthetics, pity, and King Lear.
  note: Danielle A. St. Hilaire.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and index.
  subject:
    topic: English literature
    temporal: Early modern, 1500-1700
    topic: History and criticism
  subject:
    topic: Emotions in literature
  subject:
    topic: Ethics in literature
  classification: PR418.E56 S7 2025
  classification: 820.9/353
  related item:
    title info:
      title: Medieval and Renaissance literary studies
  identifier: 9781606354919
  identifier: 1606354914
  identifier: 9781631015656
  identifier: 9781631015663
  identifier: 2024057318
  record info:
    record content source: DLC
    record creation date: 241209
    record change date: 20260506203406.2
    record identifier: in00005646533