The Reinvention of Love Poetry, Politics and Culture from Sidney to Milton [Paperback]

How cultural and political change transformed the way poets thought and wrote about love.Through close reading of the work of Sidney, Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Carew and Milton, Anthony Low argues that cultural, economic and political change transformed the way poets from Sidney to Milton thought and wrote about love. He shows how poets struggled in vain to invent a form of love in harmony with the changing world. For Milton, sacred love, cut off from communal norms, verges on hatred, while married love carries the burden of assuaging loneliness in a threatening world: society and tradition can no longer deal with the pressures of cultural change upon love.Through close reading of the work of Sidney, Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Carew and Milton, Anthony Low argues that cultural, economic and political change transformed the way poets from Sidney to Milton thought and wrote about love. He shows how poets struggled in vain to invent a form of love in harmony with the changing world. For Milton, sacred love, cut off from communal norms, verges on hatred, while married love carries the burden of assuaging loneliness in a threatening world: society and tradition can no longer deal with the pressures of cultural change upon love.Through close reading of the work of Sidney, Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Carew and Milton, Anthony Low argues that cultural, economic and political change transformed the way poets from Sidney to Milton thought and wrote about love. He shows how poets struggled to invent a form of love in harmony with the changing world. Sacred love, cut off from old traditions under cultural change, took on surprising new forms. Mutual or married love carried increasingly difficult burdens for lovers seeking shelter from loneliness or accomodation with a threatening world.Preface; Introduction; 1. Sir Philip Sidney: 'Huge desyre'; 2. John Donne: 'Defects of lonelinesse'; 3. John Donne: 'The Holy Ghost is amorous in his metaphors'; 4. George Herbert: 'The best love'l.