Volition's Face: Personification and the Will in Renaissance Literature (ReFormations: Medieval and Early Modern)

by Andrew Escobedo

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Modern readers and writers find it natural to contrast the agency of realistic fictional characters to the constrained range of action typical of literary personifications. Yet no commentator before the eighteenth century suggests that prosopopoeia signals a form of reduced agency. Andrew Escobedo argues that premodern writers, including Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton, understood personification as a literary expression of will, an essentially energetic figure that depicted passion or concept transforming into action. As the will emerged as an isolatable faculty in the Christian Middle Ages, it was seen not only as the instrument of human agency but also as...Read more
  • ISBN10 0268101698
  • ISBN13 9780268101695
  • Publish Date 30 April 2017
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint University of Notre Dame Press
  • Format eBook
  • Pages 324
  • Language English
9780268101688
9780268101688
eBook
9780268101664
9780268101664
Hardcover
9780268101671
9780268101671
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