{"product_id":"alex-wong-poetry-of-kissing-in-early-modern-europe-9781843844662","title":"Poetry of Kissing in Early Modern Europe","description":"There 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 Basia (-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. 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. Alex Wong is currently a Research Fellow in English literature at St John's College, University of Cambridge.","brand":"D.S.Brewer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53761659371862,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0925\/5829\/5382\/files\/product_image_9781843844662_1.jpg?v=1783341275","url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/alex-wong-poetry-of-kissing-in-early-modern-europe-9781843844662","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}