Reinvention of Love

In The Reinvention of Love Anthony Low argues that cultural, economic and political change transformed the way poets from Sidney to Milton thought and wrote about love. Examining the interface between social, political and economic practices and individual psyches, as reflected in literary texts, Professor Low illuminates the connections between material circumstances, perceptions, and ideals. Through detailed readings of the work of Sidney, Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Carew, and Milton, he shows how from the late sixteenth century poets struggled to replace the older Petrarchan tradition with a form of love in harmony with a changing world, and to reconcile human love and sacred devotion. Donne fled the social world; Carew made new accommodations with it; Milton revised it. For Milton, sacred love, cut off from communal norms, verges on hatred, while married love takes on the burden of assuaging loneliness in a threatening world.

"...an exemplary work of literary scholarship, occupying precisely the point of convergence between historical knowledge and critical insight into a specific poetic text." The Ben Jonson Journal, "...by an established scholar...it pushes the envelope of our knowledge..." Studies in English Literature, "...erudite and informative essay is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the 'female' gothic novel and its place in the romantic canon....A very fine collection of essays." Leslie Tannenbaum, Studies in Romanticism, "This perceptive and profoundly humane book offers a fresh and original perspective on the lines of development in Early Modern love poetry as well as a timely reassessment of the views of earlier critics...provides helpful insights into the thought of Milton and Donne in particular and a basis for qualifying and revaluing some of the major emphases of recent critical theory..." John M. Steadman, International Journal of the Classical Tradition