Abstract/Summary

This essay is a survey of one of the most popular literary forms in the Renaissance, the complaint. It sets out to define the conventions of complaint, while acknowledging its openness to generic mixing, which means that it can blur into elegy or satire. The essay traces the Medieval and early Tudor origins of complaint, the vogue for erotic complaint in the 1590s, and the forms of religious and political complaint that extend into the English civil wars and revolution. Particular attention is paid to the mode's complex negotiations of gender and its construction of sympathetic readers.