Book Description
This anthology contains five of the most important short works of Elizabethan prose fiction: George Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F.J., John Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, Robert Greene's Pandosto: The Triumph of Time, Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller, and Thomas Deloney's Jack of Newbury. Paul Salzman has modernized the texts for easier comprehension.
Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction FROM THE PUBLISHER
The Adventures of Master F.J. is a comedy of manners with a sting in its tail. In Euphues John Lyly invented a new, elaborate rhetorical style which delighted its Elizabethan audience and has been praised or parodied ever since. Pandosto was Shakespeare's source for The Winter's Tale, but Greene's is a darker story designed to shock the reader accustomed to romantic conventions. The Unfortunate Traveller marks the peak of Nashe's gift for literary pastiche, mixing picaresque narrative with mock-historical fantasy. Jack of Newbury, dedicated to 'All famous Cloth Workers in England', sums up important social contradictions in sharply observed comic scenes and brisk, witty dialogue.