The Ludic Self in Seventeenth-Century English Literature

Download or read book The Ludic Self in Seventeenth-Century English Literature written by Anna K. Nardo and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that play offered Hamlet, John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Robert Burton, and Sir Thomas Browne a way to live within the contradictions and conflicts of late Renaissance life by providing a new stance for the self. Grounding its argument in recent theories of play and in a historical analysis that sees the seventeenth century as a point of crisis in the formation of the western self, the author demonstrates how play helped mediate this crisis and how central texts of the period enact this mediation.