Sidney's Defence of Poesy--the foundational text of English poetics--is generally taken to present a model of poetry as ideal: the poet depicts ideals of human conduct and readers are inspired to imitate them. Catherine Bates sets out to challenge this received view. Attending very closely to Sidney's text, she identifies within it a model of poetry that is markedly at variance from the one presumed, and shows Sidney's text to be feeling its way toward a quite different--indeed, a de-idealist--poetics. Following key theorists of the new economic criticism, On Not Defending Poetry shows how idealist poetics, like the idealist philosophy on which it draws, is complicit with the money form and with the specific ills that attend upon it: among them, commodification, fetishism, and the abuse of power. Against culturally approved models of poetry as profitable—as benefiting the individual and the state, as providing (in the form of intellectual, moral, and social capital) a quantifiable yield—the Defence reveals an unexpected counter-argument: one in which poetry is modelled, rather, as pure expenditure, a free gift, a net loss. Where a supposedly idealist Defence sits oddly with Sidney's literary writings—which depict human behaviour that is very far from ideal—a de-idealist Defence does not. In its radical reading of the Defence, this book thus makes a decisive intervention in the field of early modern studies, while raising larger questions about a culture determined to quantify the 'value' of the humanities and to defend the arts on those grounds alone.

As an age-old metaphor for the sexual chase, the hunt provides a uniquely conflicted site for the representation of masculinity. On the one hand, hunting had from ancient times served to define a particular and culturally approved mode of masculinity as heroic, pursuant, and goal-oriented, where success was measured by the achievement of the objectives set: the capture and killing of prey. When applied to love, on the other hand, hunting was inflected quite differently. At first glance, the basic scenario of a male subject pursuing elusive quarry over which he ultimately comes to assert control might seem to epitomise the dynamic of the sexual chase, yet when poets invoke the hunt in an amorous context, this most obvious manifestation of the metaphor is not the one they put to use. On the contrary, in lyric poetry and romance, the hunt metaphor serves to demote or destabilise the masculine subject in some way. The huntsman is routinely a figure of failure: for all his efforts, he either fails to catch what he pursues, catches the wrong thing, ends up being caught by others, or runs round in circles chasing himself. His failure is measured precisely as a shortfall from the cultural ideal. The metaphor of the hunt thus opens up possibilities for exploring definitions of masculinity that deviate from culturally approved models of mastery and power. It shows how limited those models are and offers examples of alternative and counter-cultural versions of a masculine subjectivity that radically query patriarchal stereotypes of gender and class. The hunt has been the subject of increased critical interest over last few years, partly as a result of its politicisation as an issue, as reflected in recent changes to hunting legislation within the UK. Shifting attitudes to the hunt indicate that as a cultural phenomenon it continues to mobilise strong opinion and to activate notions of class and gender identity to this day. Masculinity and the Hunt is a unique study considering the link between hunting and masculinity in the literature of the sixteenth century.

Clearly illustrated with examples of written work and useful interactive exercises, this guide will encourage independent learning, helping arts and humanities students to develop effective study habits and learn successful strategies for reading and writing about theoretical texts.

In early modern lyric poetry, the male poet or lover often appears not as powerful and masterly but rather as broken, abject, and feminine. Catherine Bates examines the cultural and literary strategies behind this representation and uncovers radically alternative models of masculinity in the lyric tradition of the Renaissance. Focusing on Sidney, Ralegh, Shakespeare, and Donne, she offers astute readings of a wide range of texts – a sonnet sequence, a blazon, an elegy, a complaint, and an epistle. She shows how existing critical approaches have too much invested in the figure of the authoritative male writer to be able to do justice to the truly radical nature of these alternative masculinities. Taking direction from psychoanalytic theories of gender formation, Bates develops critical strategies that make it possible to understand and appreciate what is genuinely revolutionary about these texts and about the English Renaissance lyric tradition at large.

This text challenges the long tradition which sees human play as the fount of creativity and origin of all civilization. The book traces the history of an alternative theory of play in Shakespeare, Nietzsche and Freud, where play is an end in itself - a cultivation of aesthetic forms which do nothing to disguise their artificiality and which are loved only for the fictions which they are. Nietzsche, the arch-philosopher of play, Freud, the theorizer of slips and jokes, and Shakespeare, master of the man-made illusions of the play world, are shown to anticipate the playful philosophy which has become a hallmark of postmodern times.

The Rhetoric of Courtship is about the literature of the Elizabethan period with a particular focus on the literature of the court. This book considers how writers and courtiers related to Elizabeth I within a system of patronage and how they portrayed this relationship in fictional courtship of poetry and prose.

ABSTRACT: Over 30 bacterial species, including Vibrio parahaemolyticus, have been shown to enter the viable but nonculturable (VBNC) state where cells maintain viability but are no longer able to be cultured on routine microbiological media. Kanagawa phenomenon (hemolysin) positive (KP) strains of V. parahaemolyticm are isolated primarily from patients, whereas>99% of strains isolated from the environment are KP−. Thus, we hypothesized that the KP+ strains may enter into the VBNC state faster than KP− strains, accounting for the lack of KP+ strains isolated from marine waters. In this study, KP+ and KP− strains of V. parahaemolyticus were induced to enter into the VBNC state following nutrient downshift and incubation at 5̊C in artificial seawater (ASW), phosphate buffered saline, or 20% ASW. Also included in these studies were modified strains of V parahaemolyticus, one of which lacked the chromosomal genes to produce hemolysin while the other mutant had the hemolysin genes restored on a plasmid. No differences were noted in the times that it took the KP+ strains versus the KP− strains to enter the VBNC state. Moreover, VBNC cells could be restored to a culturable state on a routine medium following overnight temperature upshift. Using in situ hybridization, the ribosomal RNA content of a KP+ and a KP− strain of V parahaemolyticus was measured using fluorescent probes specific for the 16S and 23S rRNA subunits during entry into and exit from the VBNC state as well as during starvation. Results indicate that a significant loss of ribosomal content occurs as cells enter into the VBNC state, although this level was adequate to allow resuscitation.