Thomas_Lupton_(16th-century_writer)

Thomas Lupton (16th-century writer)

Thomas Lupton (16th-century writer)

English polemical writer


Thomas Lupton (fl. 1572–1584)[1] was an English polemical writer of the reign of Elizabeth I. His two-part work Siuqila of 1580–1 could be described as "the first Puritan utopia".[2] Biographical details for Lupton, beyond his list of publications, are not available.[1]

Chronological list of works

  • Commendatory verse for The bathes of Bathes ayde (1572) by the Welsh physician John Jones, a work on spa waters. Jones dedicated it to George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury.[1][3][4]
  • Commendatory verse for Allarme to England (1578) by Barnabe Rich, with those by Thomas Churchyard and Barnabe Googe.[1][3]
  • All for Money (1578), a morality play with numerous personified characters.[1] This was a traditional dramatic interlude, and the work was without dedication.[5]
  • A Thousand Notable Things of Sundry Sorts (1579) was a compilation, a popular work in the "wonder book" tradition.[1][6] It ran to numerous editions into the 18th century, the last being in 1793.[5] Sources included Lemnius and Mizaldus.[7][8] It was dedicated to Margaret Stanley, Countess of Derby.[5] The contents ranged from the use of the eagle-stone (aetites) in childbirth,[9] to the beasts pulling the chariot of Elagabalus according to Aelius Lampridius.[10]
  • Siuqila (or Sivqila) was a dialogue, subtitle Too Good to be True, appearing in 1580 (first part, dedicated to Christopher Hatton), and 1581 (second part, dedicated to William Cecil).[5] It made use of reversed names from Latin: Siuqila is from the Latin aliquis (anyone) backwards, a traveller from Ailgna (from Anglia, England), and another character is Omen (from Latin nemo or nobody). The idealised society Mauqsun described is named from the Latin nusquam, nowhere.[1][11] The use of these terms is a tribute to the wordplay in Utopia of Thomas More, which may derived from the Greek as outopia, no place.[12] Lupton's work has been compared to A Pleasant Dialogue (1579) by T. N. (Thomas Nicholls), dedicated to Edward Dyer.[13]
  • A Persuasion from Papistrie (1581), dedicated to Elizabeth I. It mentioned John Nicolls, an apostate Catholic priest, who was then attacked in an anonymous work by Robert Parsons that made a dismissive comment about Lupton.[5]
  • The Christian Against the Jesuit (1582), reply to the anonymous work of Parsons, dedicated to Francis Walsingham.[1][5]
  • A Dream of the Devil and Dives (1584). There was a later edition in 1615.[1]

Notes

  1. Hunter, G. K. "Lupton, Thomas (fl. 1572–1584)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/17204. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Hadfield, Andrew (4 July 2013). The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500-1640. OUP Oxford. p. 261. ISBN 978-0-19-958068-2.
  3. Sullivan, Garrett A. Jr; Stewart, Alan; Lemon, Rebecca; McDowell, Nicholas; Richards, Jennifer (30 January 2012). The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature. Vol. II. John Wiley & Sons. p. 626. ISBN 978-1-4051-9449-5.
  4. Wallis, Patrick. "Jones, John (fl. 1562–1579)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15023. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  5. McKenna, John W. (27 November 2008). Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G R Elton from His American Friends. Cambridge University Press. pp. 184–185. ISBN 978-0-521-09127-5.
  6. Park, Katharine; Daston, Lorraine J. (1981). "Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England". Past & Present. 92 (92): 37. doi:10.1093/past/92.1.20. ISSN 0031-2746. JSTOR 650748. PMID 11620415.
  7. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Lupton, Thomas (fl.1583)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 34. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  8. Fissell, Mary E. (2004). "The Politics of Reproduction in the English Reformation". Representations. 87 (1): 71. doi:10.1525/rep.2004.87.1.43. ISSN 0734-6018. JSTOR 10.1525/rep.2004.87.1.43.
  9. Woolf, Daniel (9 February 2006). "Memory and Historical Culture in Early Modern England". Journal of the Canadian Historical Association. 2 (1): 292. doi:10.7202/031038ar.
  10. Ostovich, Helen; Silcox, Mary V.; Roebuck, Graham (1999). Other Voices, Other Views: Expanding the Canon in English Renaissance Studies. University of Delaware Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-87413-680-7.
  11. Vallée, Jean-François; Heitsch, Dorothea B. (1 January 2004). Printed Voices: The Renaissance Culture of Dialogue. University of Toronto Press. p. 75 note 6. ISBN 978-0-8020-8706-5.
  12. Limpár, Ildikó (6 January 2017). Displacing the Anxieties of Our World: Spaces of the Imagination. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 49–51. ISBN 978-1-4438-6087-1.

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