Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature

Name: Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature
Brand: Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis

The stigma of haste pervaded early modern English culture, more so than the so-called stigma of print. The period\u2019s writers were perpetually short on time, but what does it mean for authors to present themselves as hasty or slow, or to characterize others similarly? This book argues that such classifications were a way to define literary value. To be hasty was, in a sense, to be irresponsible, but, in another sense, it signaled a necessary practicality. Expressions of haste revealed a deep conflict between the ideal of slow writing in classical and humanist rhetoric and the sometimes grim reality of fast printing. Indeed, the history of print is a history of haste, which carries with it a particular set of modern anxieties that are difficult to understand in the absence of an interdisciplinary approach. Many previous studies have concentrated on the period\u2019s competing definitions of time and on the obsession with how to use time well. Other studies have considered time as a.