Subject Area
Language and Literature, English and American
Abstract
This dissertation argues that early modern poets and philosophers retained the names of classical virtues but transformed them to serve materialistic ends of empire and individual lucre. Despite a tendency in early modern studies to sequester the poet’s golden world—as Sir Philip Sidney conceives of it in his Defence of Poesy—from the land of gold Sir Walter Ralegh claims to have discovered in the Americas, poetic invention yokes together the fashioning of moral virtue and the pursuit of endless profits. Through close readings of Sidney’s poetics and poesy, Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana, Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, William Shakespeare’s drama, and Ben Jonson’s plays and masques, Making the Golden World juxtaposes two golden worlds to show that material profits and imperial conquest motivated the fashioning of moral virtue in early modern poetry and drama. Although early modern poets frequently represent the desire for gold and the development of moral virtue as antithetical to each other, one cannot ignore the impact of early modern Europe’s insatiable desire for New World gold on the production of literature. Making the Golden World tells the story of how the early modern world was fashioned in poetry through competing conceits of allegorical and alchemical counterfeiting, in which allegory conceals and alchemy exposes the subordination of moral virtue to profit.
Degree Date
Summer 2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
English
Advisor
Daniel Moss
Second Advisor
Rajani Sudan
Third Advisor
Timothy Rosendale
Fourth Advisor
Thomas Herron
Number of Pages
259
Format
Recommended Citation
Mennella, Vincent, "Making the Golden World: Allegories and Alchemies of Material Wealth in Early Modern Literature and Drama" (2025). English Theses and Dissertations. 23.
https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_english_etds/23
