ABSTRACT
Ingenioso represents a fantasy of revenge on a market-driven society by deploying resentment as a rhetorical tool and the basis for a new identity. Some critics identify Thomas Nashe as a figure who manipulated the social susceptibility of print to approach something like professional independence, albeit at great cost to his identity as a man of learning. Thomas Nashe deliberately flouts the ideal of service to state and master in order to "lend machismo to his professional identity as a masterless mind". Thomas Nashe claims poetry as an exclusive vocation for trained individuals by aligning it with God; it thus becomes a sacred mystery in the medieval sense. The Parnassus plays refer to numerous poets and playwrights in their attempt to vindicate learned authors, but only Thomas Nashe merits adoption as a central character. The Parnassus plays provide an ideal occasion for studying early figurations of mastery over the literary field.
