'But the page of prowess': Personal satire, humanist imitation, and emergent authorship in Thomas Nashe's 'Strange Newes' and 'Haue With You to Saffron-Walden' and Elizabethan press culture

Traditional interpretations of Nashe's two-tract satire of Gabriel Harvey regard it as trivial or self-promoting and the print war between the two writers as an unfortunate literary enterprise. This dissertation proposes that such dismissive evaluations overlook the degree to which Nashe's contributions purposefully complicate the subjectivity they supposedly evince and complement recent theorizing about the literary criticism of satire and the emergence of print culture and authorship in late-Elizabethan England.; Chapter Two demonstrates how the ostensibly serious subject position that Nashe initially assumes in these pamphlets rehearses a generic convention that self-consciously revises the history of satire to the advantage of the satirist. Though Nashe blames Harvey, he often satirizes his own authority and, thus, suggests his own satire may function as a fantasy similar to the narrowly heroic humanist expectations of authorship he derides Harvey for.; Chapter Three examines how, via the blazon, the tracts appear to attempt to subdue Harvey through satiric anatomization and incorporation. But although Nashe dismembers Harvey in multiple ways he never can quite finish him off and bemoans his inability to do so. Ultimately, Nashe only threatens Harvey since the ancillary logic of abuse pamphleteering, as well as satire, always allows for a response that must itself be countered.; Following contemporary scholarship, which has begun to explore the more nuanced role of gender and the cultural dynamics of homosocial relations, Chapter Four observes various kinds of figurative emasculation that put both Harvey's and Nashe's manliness at issue and, so, produce considerable doubt about whom we can pronounce the better "man in print."; Chapter Five argues Nashe's anti-Harvey pamphlets rely upon a surprising appropriation of Ovidian material to reject stable authorship and literary immortality, at least within Elizabethan pamphlet culture. Neither Nashe's methods of imitation or Harvey's serve as guarantors of enduring fame, much less book sales. Even Ovid, who Nashe rescues from Harvey's public opprobrium, cannot assure him anything beyond an ephemerally conditional literary place. Hence Nashe's status as an author remains contingent upon the material circulation and popular reception of his "cheaply printed" pamphlets.; Keywords. Thomas Nashe, Gabriel Harvey, Elizabethan Literature, Print Culture, Satire...