Ben Jonson and the culture of his time

本·琼森（1572-1637）是继莎士比亚之后英国文艺复兴时期最重要的作家。他留下了大量不同的作品（17部戏剧，36部宫廷娱乐作品，相当于四卷的诗歌，散文作品，私人信件和大量的旁注），并与他那个时代的许多主要知识分子和作家保持着友谊。他的职业生涯与这一时期的关键社会，文化和政治变革相交。作为一个剧作家，他参与了戏剧市场和城市商业的世界，但他是一个敏锐的批评家，无论是当代舞台和城市。作为一名宫廷诗人和假面剧作家，他为贵族和王室工作，以事实上的桂冠诗人的身份结束了自己的生命，但他对权力世界的态度非常矛盾。作为一个文人，他努力创造自己的知识空间，用一群“儿子”包围自己，并利用印刷出版的新媒介来发展自己文本的所有权模式，这对那些继承或模仿他的人产生了深远的影响。这个项目将重新评估琼森在这些复杂和重叠的制度变化，探索他的生活和作品作为对早期现代英国独特的机会和紧张局势的回应。此外，它将特别关注琼森在后世被记住和重建为文学人物的方式。该项目围绕八个核心问题组织，每个问题都有一个章节，并在早期现代研究中占据一个既定或新兴的主题。前两个是关于琼森的自我塑造：这本书将研究琼森试图塑造的作家形象（通过分析他的肖像画和写作），并将研究他如何在他精心呈现的印刷文本中保持这一形象（作者作为自己的编辑）和在流通他的手稿（琼森从来没有充分考虑作为一个诗人的手稿）。接下来的两个主题是政治和宗教的相互关联的领域。借鉴当前和高度不稳定的史学对法院和天主教，研究将探讨琼森的作用，作为有抱负的，但并不总是成功的顾问王子，和智力和艺术的后果，他的宗教异议（他是一个天主教徒的关键十二年）。阅读伦敦生活的讽刺喜剧，将使我们认识到琼森是一位描绘了早期现代城市自我意识出现的作家;而对他晚期作品中存在问题的研究，将重新解释这些作品的特点，将其作为对导致内战的社会和文化变革的回应。最后，有两章论述了琼森的影响和死后的生活：一章叙述了琼森与当代知识分子和“本之子”的关系，这些诗人将自己定位为他的文学继承人;以及对他去世后激增的舞台传统、改编、轶事和记忆的分析，包括对他的戏剧的一些很少讨论的歌剧和电影版本的评论。这项研究将广泛涉及戏剧，诗歌，面具和散文，并将广泛借鉴即将出版的剑桥版本琼森作品（编辑。M. Butler，D.贝文顿和我。唐纳森）。它的目的是汇集他的作品被忽视的方面，并及时容纳新出现的史学，目录学和图书史的观点。它将突出琼森的知识分子与学者，如塞尔登，卡姆登和棉花的关系，以及他的作品对内战前英国的意识形态压力点的反应。它还将探讨现代对琼森的接受（有时被忽视）是如何受到他死后成长起来的神话的影响的。

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) is arguably the most important English Renaissance writer after Shakespeare. He left a large and varied body of works (seventeen plays, three dozen court entertainments, the equivalent of four volumes of verse, prose works, personal letters, and extensive marginalia), and maintained friendships with many of the leading intellectuals and writers of his time. His career intersects with the key social, cultural and political changes of the period. As a playwright, he was involved in the theatrical marketplace and the world of urban commerce, yet he was a keen critic of both the contemporary stage and city. As a court poet and masque writer, he worked for the aristocracy and the crown, ending his life as de facto poet laureate, yet he was deeply ambivalent about the world of power. And as man of letters, he endeavoured to create his own intellectual space, surrounding himself with a tribe of 'sons' and using the new medium of print publication to develop a model of ownership of his own texts which was profoundly influential for those who succeeded or imitated him. This project will re-evaluate Jonson in relation to these complex and overlapping institutional changes, exploring his life and works as a response to the distinctive opportunities and tensions of early modern England. Additionally, it will pay special attention to the ways in which Jonson has been remembered and reconstructed as a literary figure in later times.The project is organized around eight core issues, each of which has a chapter and takes up an established or emerging topic in early modern studies. The first two concern Jonson's self-fashioning: the book will study the image Jonson sought to project of himself as a writer (using analysis of his portraiture as well as his writing), and will look at the way that he sustained this image in his meticulous presentation of his printed texts (the author as his own editor) and in the circulation of his manuscripts (Jonson has never been adequately considered as a poet for manuscript). The next two themes are the interlinked zones of politics and religion. Drawing on the current and highly volatile historiography on the court and on Catholicism, the study will explore Jonson's role as aspiring but not always successful counsellor of princes, and the intellectual and artistic consequences of his religious dissent (he was a Catholic for twelve crucial years). A reading of the satirical comedies of London life will situate Jonson as a writer who charted the emergence of the early modern urban self-consciousness; and a study of his problematic late writings will reinterpret their peculiarities as a response to the social and cultural changes leading towards the civil war. Finally, two chapters address Jonson's influence and after-life: an account of Jonson's at times testy relationships with contemporary intellectuals and with the 'Sons of Ben', those poets who positioned themselves as his literary heirs; and an analysis of the stage traditions, adaptations, anecdotes and memories that proliferated after his death, including commentary on some rarely discussed operatic and film versions of his plays.This study will range widely across the plays, poetry, masques, and prose, and will draw extensively on work arising from the forthcoming Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (eds. M. Butler, D. Bevington and I. Donaldson). It aims to draw together neglected aspects of his works, and to accommodate timely perspectives newly emerging in historiography, bibliography, and book history. It will foreground Jonson's intellectual relationships with scholars such as Selden, Camden and Cotton, and the response of his works to the ideological pressure points of pre-civil war England. It will also explore the way that the modern reception (and sometimes neglect) of Jonson has been conditioned by the myths about him that grew up after his death.