{"product_id":"paper-monsters-persona-and-literary-culture-in-elizabethan-england-9780812251296","title":"Paper Monsters: Persona and Literary Culture in Elizabethan England","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003ePaper Monsters\u003c\/i\u003e, Samuel Fallon charts the striking rise, at the turn to the seventeenth century, of a new species of textual being: the serial, semifictional persona. When Thomas Nashe introduced his charismatic alter ego Pierce Penilesse in a 1592 text, he described the figure as a paper monster, not fashioned but begotten into something curiously like life. The next decade bore this description out, as Pierce took on a life of his own, inspiring other writers to insert him into their own works. And Pierce was hardly alone: such figures as the polemicist Martin Marprelate, the lovers Philisides and Astrophil, the shepherd-laureate Colin Clout, the prodigal wit Euphues, and, in an odd twist, the historical author Robert Greene all outgrew their fictional origins, moving from text to text and author to author, purporting to speak their own words, even surviving their creators' deaths, and installing themselves in the process as agents at large in the real world of writing, publication, and reception. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn seeking to understand these paper monsters as a historically specific and rather short-lived phenomenon, Fallon looks to the rapid expansion of the London book trade in the years of their ascendancy. Personae were products of print, the medium that rendered them portable, free-floating figures. But they were also the central fictions of a burgeoning literary field: they embodied that field's negotiations between manuscript and print, and they forged a new form of public, textual selfhood. Sustained by the appropriative rewritings they inspired, personae came to seem like autonomous citizens of the literary public. Fallon argues that their status as collective fictions, passed among writers, publishers, and readers, positioned personae as the animating figures of what we have come to call print culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Samuel Fallon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Pennsylvania Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/07\/2019\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 272\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.25lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.30w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780812251296\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 05\/01\/2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSamuel Fallon teaches English at the State University of New York, Geneseo.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":40265604628595,"sku":"9.78E+12","price":69.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/9255\/0515\/products\/img_b0a9faff-f1bd-4b99-9520-5dc9693c7a4a.jpg?v=1657721622","url":"https:\/\/bookstorenmore.com\/products\/paper-monsters-persona-and-literary-culture-in-elizabethan-england-9780812251296","provider":"Bookstore N More","version":"1.0","type":"link"}