Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses

M. J. Kidnie (University of Western Ontario)

Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Domains

Protestants

Dates

First circulation or publication 1583

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Pamphlets/ Tracts/ Chapbooks
Treatise

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

The Anatomie of Abuses

Philip Stubbes attacks forcefully and at length both public and private English life, exposing to view – and, he hopes, correction – the supposed abuses of Elizabethan society. The book offers a wide-ranging social critique presented in the form of a dialogue between Philoponus, the educated, worldly-wise traveller, and Spudeus, the country yokel, who chat as they walk along about the manners of the people who live in the foreign land of England (“Ailgna” in the first three editions). These particular character names, which translate from the Greek as “hard worker” and “earnest student”, would have had scholastic resonances for many of Stubbes's readers. The former alludes to John Philoponus, the sixth-century Alexandrian philosopher who confuted…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

924 words

Citation: Kidnie, M. J.. "The Anatomie of Abuses". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 September 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1595, accessed 25 April 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here