Ben Jonson and the culture of his time

本·琼生（1572-1637）可以说是继莎士比亚之后英国文艺复兴时期最重要的作家。他留下了大量多样的作品（17部戏剧，30多部宫廷娱乐作品，相当于四卷诗集，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。他的职业生涯与那个时期的关键社会、文化和政治变革相交叉。作为一个剧作家，他参与了戏剧市场和城市商业世界，但他对当代舞台和城市都是一个敏锐的批评家。作为一名宫廷诗人和假面舞作家，他为贵族和王室工作，结束了他作为事实上的桂冠诗人的生命，但他对权力世界深感矛盾。作为一个文人，他努力创造自己的知识空间，让一群“儿子”围绕在自己周围，并利用印刷出版的新媒介发展出一种拥有自己作品的模式，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约翰逊与这些复杂和重叠的制度变化的关系，探索他的生活和作品，作为对早期现代英国独特机遇和紧张局势的回应。此外，它将特别关注约翰逊在后世作为一个文学人物被记住和重建的方式。该项目围绕八个核心问题进行组织，每个问题都有一章，并在早期现代研究中采取了一个既定或新兴的主题。前两点与琼森的自我塑造有关：这本书将研究琼森作为一个作家（通过对他的肖像和写作的分析）试图投射的形象，并将研究他在印刷文本（作者作为他自己的编辑）和手稿流通中保持这种形象的方式（琼森从未被充分认为是一位手稿诗人）。接下来的两个主题是政治和宗教的相互联系。根据当前宫廷和天主教的高度不稳定的史学，这项研究将探索约翰逊作为有抱负但并不总是成功的王子顾问的角色，以及他的宗教异议对智力和艺术的影响（他在关键的12年里是天主教徒）。读一读伦敦生活的讽刺喜剧，你会发现约翰逊是一位描绘了早期现代城市自我意识出现的作家；对他后期有问题的作品的研究将重新解释这些作品的特点，作为对导致内战的社会和文化变革的回应。最后，有两章论述了约翰逊的影响和他死后的生活：叙述了约翰逊与当代知识分子和“本之子”（那些把自己定位为他的文学继承人的诗人）之间时而暴躁的关系；并分析了舞台传统、改编、轶事和他死后涌现的记忆，包括对一些很少被讨论的他的戏剧的歌剧和电影版本的评论。这项研究将广泛涉及戏剧、诗歌、假面舞和散文，并将广泛借鉴即将出版的剑桥版本·琼森作品（编辑）。M.巴特勒，D.贝文顿和I.唐纳森)。它的目的是把他的作品中被忽视的方面汇集在一起，并适应在史学、目录学和书籍历史中及时出现的观点。它将突出约翰逊与塞尔登、卡姆登和科顿等学者的学术关系，以及他的作品对内战前英国意识形态压力点的反应。它还将探讨约翰逊的现代接受（有时被忽视）是如何受到他死后成长起来的关于他的神话的影响的。

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.