{"product_id":"the-poetry-of-kissing-in-early-modern-europe","title":"The Poetry of Kissing in Early Modern Europe: From the Catullan Revival to Secundus, Shakespeare and the English Cavaliers","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe \"kissing-poem\" genre was wide-spread in Renaissance literature; this book surveys its form and development.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere is a great deal of kissing in Renaissance poetry, but modern critics do not generally recognise (as early readers did) that the literary conventions of the kiss were closely related to a fully-formed, lively and popular genre of Neo-Latin \"kissing-poems\". Beginning with the imitation of Catullus in fifteenth-century Italy, this specialised form was securely established in the next century by the Dutch poet Janus Secundus, whose elegant \u003ci\u003eBasia\u003c\/i\u003e (\"Kisses\") were an extraordinary international success. Secundus stimulated a long-lived tradition of Latin and vernacular \"kisses\", willfully repetitious and yet meticulously varied, which can tell us much about humanist poetics.\u003cbr\u003e This book offers a critical account of the Renaissance kiss-poem, using an abundance of vivid and often racy examples, many of  them drawn from authors who are all but forgotten today. It shows that the genre had a sophisticated rationale and clear but flexible conventions. These include habits of irony, mood and structure that proved widely influential, and some slippery, self-conscious ways of dealing with masculine sexuality. Presenting new readings of English writers including Sidney, Shakespeare and Donne, the study also reminds us how important Neo-Latin writing was to the literary culture of early modern Britain. A number of well known texts are thus placed in a context unfamiliar to most modern scholars, in order to show how deftly their kisses engage with an international tradition of humanist poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  Alex Wong is currently a Research Fellow in English literature at St John's College, University of Cambridge.","brand":"None","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":46623339544786,"sku":"9781843844662","price":222.7,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0655\/8980\/5233\/files\/1_bc85d175-d864-48a2-a68f-d1cc700de85c.jpg?v=1763634269","url":"https:\/\/www.indigo.ca\/products\/the-poetry-of-kissing-in-early-modern-europe","provider":"Indigo","version":"1.0","type":"link"}