The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia and the Invention of English Literature [Hardcover]

Revises the semiotic paradigm of the early modern 'literary system' dominant since 1983 by adapting methods?entailed in the?idea that literary works emerge through a series of semiotic events.?Davis analyzes Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Astrophil and Stella to demonstrate how design elements stage the scene of reading these works.The Literary System and its Symptoms Feigning History in the 1590 Arcadia The Performance of Astrophel and Stella in the 1591 Quartos The One and the Many: The Sidney Name in Print, 1590-1593 Mary Sidney Herbert and the (Re)Invention of Arcadia 1598 Folio and the Apology for Poetry

'Davis has written a fascinating, illuminating book. Rather than focusing on a single text supposedly representing Sir Philip Sidney's 'true' intentions, Davis examines the thematics of each individual issue of the Arcadia and Astrophil and Stella. Davis then examines how Elizabethan sonneteers and polemicists used Sidney's name for their own purposes. Brilliantly combining literary history, textual scholarship, metrical analysis, and intense close-reading, Davis has irrevocably changed Sidney scholarship as well as providing a model for how 'un-editing' early modern texts provides fascinating, revisionary criticism.' - Peter C. Herman, Professor, San Diego State University and author of Destablizing Milton: 'Paradise Lost' and the Poetics of Incertitude

'Davis's new book makes a significant contribution to both the textual history and the reception history of Sir Philip Sidney and the Sidney circle through carefully and intelligently reconstructing the contexts in which the poet's writings first made it into print. Davis not only offers valuable and original insights into the place of Sidney's publications within early modern book history, but he reveals the true extent of what amounted to a competition to represent Sidneyfollowing his death, bothby his immediate literary heirs and by modern critics and commentators. This book leads us tlS5