Strange Newes : Thomas Nashe entre tradition et innovation

Résumé 0

Strange Newes, Thomas Nashe's reply to Gabriel Harvey's Foure Letters focuses on the question of literary authority and writing modes. Nashe who has a keen sense of the social constraints on the two writers and of their dependence on authorities mercilessly points out how they lead Harvey to indulge in fuzzy speculations expressed in ponderous rhetoric. The two Works straddle the border of the public and private spheres; Harvey does not play by the rules and Nashe tries to push them and his inventiveness involves a kind of brinkmanship, a transgression of accepted codes. Nashe finds new uses for the written word, he writes for the common man and speaks for the rabble whose voice creeps into Strange Newes. As in later productions the readers'response fashions his text.The spoken word is turned into the written, the written word is oralised. Nashe's self-conscious aim is literary innovation and we already see the newspaper as a mosaic in Nashe's dream to use all languages under Heaven. Communication is polyphonic with wildly shifting addresses and perspectives, with improvisation, quotation and reflexivity. This was a text to chew and savour as modem readers do those of their favourite columnists.