Sonnet Sequences and Social Distinction in Renaissance England

A study of the popularity of sonnet sequences in Renaissance England.

Preface; 1. Sonnet sequences and social distinction; 2. Post-romantic lyric: class and the critical apparatus of sonnet conventions; 3. 'An Englishe box': Calvinism and commodities in Anne Lok's A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner; 4. 'Nobler Desires' and Sidney's Astrophil and Stella; 5. 'So plenty makes me poore': Ireland, capitalism, and class in Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalamion; 6. 'Till my bad angel fire my good one out': engendering economic expertise in Shakespeare's Sonnets; 7. 'The English straine': absolutism, class, and Drayton's ideas, 1594-1619; Afterword: engendering class: Drayton, Wroth, Milton, and the genesis of the public sphere.