Hafters and crafters : verbal unruliness and the contest for artistic discourse in the english renaissance

Chapter One argues for the recovery of the word haft. An account of the denotative varieties of haft provides a way of looking back into an implicit logic of rhetorical practice which has fallen out of use. Chapter Two focuses on two texts by John Skelton which demonstrate the rhetorical texture of "literary" contests: the flyting "Agenst Garnesche" (1514) and the interlude Magnyfycence (c. 1515). In the former, Skelton falls to verbal blows with his opponent, Christopher Garnesche, in an effort to exalt his own reputation at court while humiliating Garnesche. In Magnyfycence, Skelton enlarges an understanding of haft through characters who explicitly claim to be hafters. Chapter Three examines oppositional discourse in the English Renaissance as it appears later in the sixteenth century in Sidney's Defense of Poesie and Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie. As opposed to the ostentatious style and heavy-handed nature of earlier-century flytings, the manner in which authors wage later-century verbal combat is more restrained, and private contests for a reputation as a distinguished poet must be disguised as a public effort to imitate courtly decorum in the form of "poesie." Here, haft marks out the places where professional status and style intersect. In Chapter Four, haft serves as a means of indicating the aptness of one's ideas about language. Herein the quarrel between Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey is considered as a later sixteenth-century flyting disguised as criticism. This debate helps shape the identity and boundaries of the profession of English literature, setting out the limits of decorum by means of their eristic nature. Chapter Five examines haft as a transgression of boundaries via indecorous language of rogues, vagrants, and ruffians in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair. Just as the actual fair event places a number of the dramatis personae in close proximity to rogues and cut-purses, Bartholomew Fair offers playgoers the opportunity to slum in an anti-pastoral carnival world without risking injury to their own purse or person. The dramatist benefits from exchanging a performative text with an audience whose admiration fills the symbolic coffers of Jonson's cultural strongbox.