Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII Literary Culture and the Arts of Deceit

A study of the culture of spectatorship and voyeurism that shaped early Tudor English literary life.

This revisionary study of the origins of courtly poetry reveals the culture of spectatorship and voyeurism that shaped early Tudor English literary life. Through research into the reception of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, it demonstrates how Pandarus became the model of the early modern courtier. His blend of counsel, secrecy and eroticism informed the behaviour of poets, lovers, diplomats and even Henry VIII himself. In close readings of the poetry of Hawes and Skelton, the drama of the court, the letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, the writings of Thomas Wyatt, and manuscript anthologies and early printed books, Seth Lerer illuminates a 'Pandaric' world of displayed bodies, surreptitious letters and transgressive performances. In the process, he redraws the boundaries between the medieval and the Renaissance and illustrates the centrality of the verse epistle to the construction of subjectivity.

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Note on editions and abbreviations; 1. Pretexts: Chaucer's Pandarus and the origins of courtly discourse; 2. The King's Pandars: performing courtiership in the 1510s; 3. The King's hand: body politics in the letters of Henry VIII; 4. Private quotations, public memories: Troilus and Criseyde and the politics of the manuscript anthology; 5. Wyatt, Chaucer, Tottel: the verse epistle and the subjects of the courtly lyric; Notes; Index.

Seth Lerer reveals the culture of spectatorship and voyeurism that shaped early Tudor English literary life. Through close readings of early Tudor poetry, court drama, letters, anthologies and printed books, Lerer illuminates a world of displayed bodies, surreptitious letters and transgressive performances.