English Renaissance Literary Criticism

In this collection of English Renaissance literary criticism, Vickers demonstrates that English critics in the period 1520 to 1650 owed most to classical writers on rhetoric and poetics: Cicero, Horace, Quintilian, Plutarch. Annotated selections identify classical and other sources and give translations for Greek, Latin, and Italian texts.

In addition to the usual suspects (Spenser, Harvey, Sidney, Jonson, Milton, et al), he includes long selections from rhetoricians Wilson and Puttenham; several hard-to-find pieces; thoughtfully edited passages from Shakespeare, Chapman, and Champion; and John Ford's never-before-printed 'Elegy for John Fletcher'. What makes this selection so insightful and useful is Vickers' recognition of the rhetorical and prescriptive character of early modern English criticism...[one] of the most distinguished publications in Renaissance literary studies to have appeared in many years.

Autorentext
Brian Vickers is Chair of English Language and Literature, ETH Zürich.

Klappentext

This is the first comprehensive collection of English Renaissance literary criticism to appear for nearly a century. Brian Vickers has brought together a wide-ranging selection of texts, some well-known (such as Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry, the most brilliant critical essay of the whole Renaissance, here given complete), some little-known (Dudley North's account of Metaphysical poetry), and one being printed for the first time (John Ford's elegy on John Fletcher).

Inhalt
PREFACE; ABBREVIATIONS; INTRODUCTION; FURTHER READING; A NOTE ON THE TEXTS; 1. Sir Thomas Elyot; 2. Henry Howard; 3. Thomas Wilson; 4. Alexander Neville; 5. William Baldwin; 6. Roger Ascham; 7. George Gascoigne; 8. George Whetstone; 9. Edmund Spenser and E.K; 10. George Puttenham; 11. Edmund Spenser; 12. Sir John Harrington; 13. William Shakespeare; 14. Gabriel Harvey; 15. Sir Philip Sidney; 16. George Chapman; 17. Robert Southwell; 18. John Hoskyns; 19. Thomas Campion; 20. Samuel Daniel; 21. Ben Jonson, Rhymes against rhyme; 22. Francis Bacon; 23. Ben Jonson, The moral function of poetry; 24. Thomas Heywood; 25. John Fletcher; 26. Dudley North; 27. George Chapman; 28. Ben Jonson, The faults of contemporary drama; 29. William Drummond; 30. Ben Jonson, A tribute to Shakespeare; 31. John Ford; 32. Philip Massinger; 33. Thomas Carew; 34. Ben Jonson, Notes on literature; 35. John Milton; 36. Thomas Hobbes; GLOSSARY; LIST OF RHETORICAL FIGURES; INDEX