Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII: Literary Culture and the Arts of Deceit (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, Series Number 18)

This revisionary study of the origins of courtly literature reveals the culture of spectatorship and voyeurism that shaped early Tudor English literary life. Through new research into the reception of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, it demonstrates how Pandarus became the model of the early modern courtier. In close readings of early Tudor poetry, court drama, letters, manuscript anthologies and printed books, Seth Lerer illuminates a "Pandaric" world of displayed bodies, surreptitious letters, and transgressive performances.