Excess and the mean in early modern English literature

Introduction: ancient paradigms in modern conflicts

pt. 1. Two early modern revisions of the mean

1. Donne and the personal mean

2. "Mediocrities" and "extremities": Baconian flexibility and the Aristotelian mean

pt. 2. Means and extremes in early modern Georgic

3. Moderation, temperate climate, and national ethos from Spenser to Milton

4. Concord, conquest, and commerce from Spenser to Cowley

pt. 3. Erotic excess and early modern social conflicts

5. Passionate extremes and noble natures from Elizabethan to Caroline literature

6. Erotic excess versus interest in mid- to late-seventeenth-century literature

pt. 4. Moderation and excess in the seveneteenth-century symposiastic lyric

7. Drinking and the politics of poetic identity from Jonson to Herrick

8. Drinking and cultural conflict from Lovelace to Rochester

pt. 5. Reimagining moderation: the Miltonic example

9. Paradise lost, pleasurable restraint, and the mean of self-respect

Postscript: sublime excess, dull moderation, and contemporary ambivalence.