Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament

A brilliant postmodern critique of Renaissance subjectivity,Cultural Aestheticsexplores the simultaneous formation and fragmentation of aristocratic "selfhood" in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Patricia Fumerton situates the self within its sumptuous array of "trivial" arts--including the court literatures of chivalric romance, sonnet, and masque and the arts of architecture, miniature painting, stage design, and cuisine. Her integration of historicist and aesthetic perspectives makes this a provocative contribution to the vigorous field of Renaissance cultural studies.Patricia Fumerton is the author of 'Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament', published 1993 under ISBN 9780226269535 and ISBN 0226269531.