Cover -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Politic Romance -- 2 From Morality to Ethics -- Chapter 1 Allegory, Constancy, and the Politic Agent -- 1 Acquisitive Desire and Agency in Sidney's Arcadia -- 2 The Influence of Sidney: Wroth's Urania -- 3 Allegory and Irony -- 4 The English Crisis of Virtù and Allegory's Mediating Role -- 5 Constancy and the Challenge of Self-Interest -- 6 Alienated Self-Regard -- 7 Virtue and Transparency -- Chapter 2 Incest, Rivalry, and Succession: Romance and the Problem of Sociality -- 1 Peers Who Are Chastened -- 2 Incest and Chastity -- 3 Between Endogamy and Marriage: The Fantasy of Agency -- 4 Barclay's Argenis: The Cultural Plot of Rivalry -- 5 Toward Emulation -- 6 Succession -- 7 The Readers of Romance -- Chapter 3 The Trials of Love: Interest and Social Bonds in Midcentury Romance -- 1 The New Discourse of Interest -- 2 Interest and its Discontents -- 3 Love and Interest -- 4 Friendship -- 5 Oceana and the "Interest of Mankind," or Reading Politics by Way of Romance -- 6 Theodora and Disinterested Passion -- Chapter 4 Interest, the Sovereign Hero, and the End of Romance -- 1 The Tyrannical Hero -- 2 Interest as Critique in The Princess Cloria -- 3 Aretina, Eliana, and the Refusal of Sovereignty -- 4 Rape and the Failure of the Symbolic in Pandion and Amphigenia -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.