The first monograph to address Ben Jonson’s thought on the visual arts, Image, Word, and Catholicism in Ben Jonson’s Works: Curating Pictures shows how Jonson placed a high value on the visual arts and the extent to which he designed his poetics around visual frames. Up until this point, scholarship has been oddly divided on these points. Addressing a wider range of evidence than previous studies, Image, Word, and Catholicism in Ben Jonson’s Works both resolves this division and explains it by surveying the influence of Catholic ideas Jonson encountered during the early part of his literary career (1598-1610) while a formal member of the Roman Church. Examining Jonson’s works alongside the writings of Catholic writers such as Thomas Palmer, Thomas Wright, Robert Southwell, and Ignatius of Loyola, this work proposes a fresh sketch of Jonson’s nuanced visual imagination, as well as suggests ways to situate his poetry within this important context.
The first monograph to address Ben Jonson’s thought on the visual arts, Image, Word, and Catholicism in Ben Jonson’s Works: Curating Pictures shows how Jonson placed a high value on the visual arts and the extent to which he designed his poetics around visual frames.
Arvustused
"This book, brimming with citations to other relevant scholarship, deals with an important but often-neglected topic: Ben Jonsons poetry. While doing so, the book raises various intriguing issues, especially concerning the potential connections between that poetry and Jonsons Catholicism and also the connections between that poetry and the visual arts."
Robert C. Evans, senior editor of The Ben Jonson Journal, USA
Introduction: Pray thee take care, that takst my book in hand: Ben
Jonson as Curator
Chapter One: Ut Pictura Poesis: The Visual Arts and
Catholic Theology in Jonsons Works
Chapter Two: Ben Jonson, Thomas Palmer,
and Jesuit Spirituality: Emblematizing Nature in To Penshurst and To Sir
Robert Wroth
Chapter Three: The Influence of Robert Southwell on Ben
Jonsons Poetry of Love and Devotion
Chapter Four: Curating Jonsons Pictures
of Lives, Deeds, and the Image of God
Chapter Five: Jonsons Metaphysical
Poetry and Catholic Theology in To Celia, On My First Son, and the
Portrait of Venetia Digby as Prudence Conclusion: Anxiety and Acceptance:
Visual Imagination and the Senses in Bartholomew Fair, Volpone, and The
Alchemist Beyond the Gutenberg Galaxy Postscript
Steven Hrdlicka studied with Richard Harp at UNLV. He teaches English and Humanities at Great Basin College in Elko, NV and has published articles and book chapters on Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, the Irish Painter Jack B. Yeats, and Tolkien. His scholarship has appeared in The Arden Shakespeare, Religion and the Arts, The Ben Jonson Journal, Gale Researcher, and Norton. He is co-editor of Quidditas, a journal of Medieval and Renaissance studies
