Title: From the City to the Country: Community Imagination in Ben Jonson’s City Comedies and Country House Poems

Abstract: There is a long-standing tradition of community writing in English literature. Writers are particularly active in imagining diversified communities in the transitional period. During the Renaissance transitional period from medieval rural to modern urban civilization, the playwright Ben Jonson, feigns communities differently from the perspectives of city and country. In his city comedies, Ben Jonson imagines realistically an ironic city community, criticizing the split of real community. In his country house poetry, Ben Jonson continues to criticize the split city community and fictionalizes a friendly community of country house by eulogizing the host’s hospitality, easing the class conflicts and identity anxieties of the transition period, and providing a classical mythological solution for the early modern transformation of England.

Keywords: country house poems, city comedies, community, Ben Jonson

Authors: Meiqun Wu, Associate Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Changsha University, Changsha, Hunan, China; Yao Fang, Lecturer, School of Foreign Languages, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, Anhui, China.