Historicism after Historicism

Nolan, Maura

doi:10.1057/9780230621558_4

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 3 publications

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“…66 Various wrestlings with that prominence have figured form and history as inextricable partners. 67 In a similar vein, the close of Ardis Butterfield's incisive category study of "medieval lyric" leaves us with form liminally "on and off the page, in and out of language, in and out of history." 68 I agree with much in these accounts, and I certainly do not wish here to replay disciplinary contests over the relative roles of form and history: the two seem intimately related much of the time.…”

Section: Form's Persistencementioning

confidence: 98%

Form, Time, and the “First English Sonnet”

Sawyer

2021

The Chaucer Review

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The earliest known English poem rhyming ababcdcdefefgg appears within John Metham's 1448/9 romance Amoryus and Cleopes. However, scholarship cannot easily claim Metham's lyric as "the first English sonnet": contrary to past suggestions, available historical and manuscript evidence indicates that he did not intentionally create it as a sonnet, but rather composed in the form accidentally. This inset lyric's rhyme scheme therefore represents, possibly uniquely in English, sonnet form without the sonnet tradition. Despite this isolation, however, attentive reading shows that the lyric achieves certain effects very like those produced by later English sonnets. The common features underpinning these effects even in a text not knowingly written as a sonnet might help criticism isolate factors which constitute form's essence or quiddity.

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Section: Form's Persistencementioning

confidence: 98%