Sorry, but I had never thought of pastoral and Ovidian poetry, at least, as
"banned from the canon." Marlowe, _Venus and Adonis_, and SC seem to be
regulars in any canonic anthology I know of. What other works are you
considering?
To me it seems hard to deny that, despite the convenience of the sonnet for
teaching new critical approaches in the 20th century, the character of the
sonnet as "portable poetry"--easily copied from one private anthology to
another--together with its patina of sophistication had something to do with
its popularity in the 16th century and its critical dominance today.
Moreover, the shadow of Petrarchism looms over works such as _Arcadia_ and
FQ, even if the texts also explore fulfilled pleasures and new ways of
dabbling in them.
The point that contemporary critics sometimes lean too heavily on Petrarchism
in the period may be well taken, but, Dorothy Stephens' recent book has
shown, our understanding of Petarchism itself may be in need of nuanced
refinement.
Dan Lochman
shirley sharon-zisser wrote:
> we might also want to consider why, although most late Elizabethan English
> poetry is non- or anti-Petrarchan, but pastoral, Ovidian, Euphuistic, most
> Renaissance critics prefer to fixate on Petrachism with its on fixation on
> the imaginary and leave the complex, pleasurable, intriguing
> rhetorical-qua-erotic complexities of the pastoral, Euphuistic, Ovidian,
> espeically when they are intertwined, banned from the canon.
>
> Shirley Sharon-Zisser
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