Reading Popular Romance In Early Modern England

With the expansion of the publishing industry between the sixteenth andeighteenth centuries reading for pleasure became possible for an increasingnumber of peop... » 

With the expansion of the publishing industry between the sixteenth andeighteenth centuries reading for pleasure became possible for an increasingnumber of people not just the wealthy and educated. The growth of the booktrade produced alongside elite literature a parallel popular literature. LoriHumphrey Newcomb examines the proliferation of romances in early modernEngland as well as their vilification by elite writers. Using as her casestudy Robert Greenes Pandosto 1585 an Elizabethan prose romance thatinspired Shakespeares late play The Winters Tale she shows that the twoforms of literature influenced each other profoundly.Because Shakespeares works are considered timeless literary achievementscritics have distanced his plays from his romantic sources a separation thatuntil now has gone unquestioned. Newcomb undermines this assumption providinga fascinating account of an early bestsellers incarnations over 250 years ofliterary history. «