The action of Ben Jonson's poetry /

Van den Berg (University of Washington) sees the Jonsonian poem as a dramatic response to persons, events, and values within the poet's milieu. She surveys the themes of love, friendship, and history, Jonson's relation to the Sidneys, and his autobiographical poems of 1623-24. She ends with a reading of Under-wood. Her approach, drawing upon Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (CH, May '81), seeks a poetic epistemology for Jonson's ways of knowing his world through his art and of representing himself through that art. The ``action'' of Jonson's poetry is the proffering of a represented self that mediates the juxtaposed literary, historic, and textual frameworks of his poetic discourse. This approach illuminates well Jonson's unique appropriation of classical and humanistic poetic traditions according to the dictates of his own critical credo. It succeeds less well in avoiding a turgid prose style as she attempts to elucidate numerous and finely discriminated contextual relationships. The notes, index, and select bibliography make this an excellent research tool suitable for graduates and advanced undergraduates.-C. Baker, Lamar University