Lyly, John - Madelon Gohlke (essay date 1977)
Madelon Gohlke (essay date 1977)
SOURCE: "Reading Euphues," in Criticism, Vol. 19, No. 2, Spring, 1977, pp. 103-17.
[In the following essay, Gohlke describes Euphues as an example of mannerist art, written with "deliberately obstructive qualities" which challenge its readers to interpet meanings and resolve ambiguities.]
Anyone who reads Euphues knows that it is hard, and that what makes it hard is the peculiarly obstructive nature of its style. Euphuism describes not only the manner in which the tale is written, but also the dominant form of communication within the fiction.1 What is most striking about this form of communication, moreover, is not what it most obviously conveys, but what it manages to conceal. Lyly's euphuism is based on two levels of discourse, one of which is latent or implicit. An interpretation of the tale involves first a reading of this level of discourse in the communications...
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