Humanism and Good Books in Sixteenth-Century England PDF Download
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Author: Katherine C. Little
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192883216
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
This book explores sixteenth-century humanism as an origin for the idea of literature as good, even great, books. It argues that humanists located the value of books not only in the goodness of their writing-their eloquence—but also in their capacity to shape readers in good and bad behavior, thoughts, and feelings, in other words, in their morality. To approach humanism in this way, by attending to its moral interests, is to provide a new perspective on periodization, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance / early modern. That is, humanists did not so much rupture with medieval ideas about literature or with medieval models as they adapted and altered them, offering a new confidence about an old idea: the moral instructiveness of pagan, classical texts for Christian readers. This revaluation of literature was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, humanist confidence inspired authors to invent their own good books—good in style and morals—in morality plays such as Everyman and the Christian Terence tradition and in educational treatises such as Sir Thomas Elyot's Boke of the Governour. On the other hand, humanism placed a new burden on authors, requiring their work to teach and delight. In the wake of humanism, authors struggled to articulate the value of their work for readers, returning to a pre-humanist path that they associated with Geoffrey Chaucer. This medieval-inflected doubt pervades the late sixteenth-century writings of the most prolific and influential Elizabethans-Robert Greene, George Gascoigne, and Edmund Spenser.
Author: Katherine C. Little
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192883216
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book explores sixteenth-century humanism as an origin for the idea of literature as good, even great, books. It argues that humanists located the value of books not only in the goodness of their writing-their eloquence—but also in their capacity to shape readers in good and bad behavior, thoughts, and feelings, in other words, in their morality. To approach humanism in this way, by attending to its moral interests, is to provide a new perspective on periodization, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance / early modern. That is, humanists did not so much rupture with medieval ideas about literature or with medieval models as they adapted and altered them, offering a new confidence about an old idea: the moral instructiveness of pagan, classical texts for Christian readers. This revaluation of literature was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, humanist confidence inspired authors to invent their own good books—good in style and morals—in morality plays such as Everyman and the Christian Terence tradition and in educational treatises such as Sir Thomas Elyot's Boke of the Governour. On the other hand, humanism placed a new burden on authors, requiring their work to teach and delight. In the wake of humanism, authors struggled to articulate the value of their work for readers, returning to a pre-humanist path that they associated with Geoffrey Chaucer. This medieval-inflected doubt pervades the late sixteenth-century writings of the most prolific and influential Elizabethans-Robert Greene, George Gascoigne, and Edmund Spenser.
Author: Daniel Wakelin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019921588X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
Wakelin uses new methods and theories in the history of reading to uncover fresh information about the design, ownership, and marginalia of books in a neglected period in English literary history. This is the first book to identify the origins of the humanist tradition in England in the 15th century.
Author: Jill Kraye
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521436243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, humanism played a key role in European culture. Beginning as a movement based on the recovery, interpretation and imitation of ancient Greek and Roman texts and the archaeological study of the physical remains of antiquity, humanism turned into a dynamic cultural programme, influencing almost every facet of Renaissance intellectual life. The fourteen essays in this 1996 volume deal with all aspects of the movement, from language learning to the development of science, from the effect of humanism on biblical study to its influence on art, from its Italian origins to its manifestations in the literature of More, Sidney and Shakespeare. A detailed biographical index, and a guide to further reading, are provided. Overall, The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism provides a comprehensive introduction to a major movement in the culture of early modern Europe.
Author: Rebecca W. Bushnell
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801483561
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
In pedagogical manuals strongly reminiscent of gardening guides, the scholar was seen as both a pliant vine and a force of nature.
Author: Alan Stewart
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400864577
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
Humanism, in both its rhetoric and practice, attempted to transform the relationships between men that constituted the fabric of early modern society. So argues Alan Stewart in this ground-breaking investigation into the impact of humanism in sixteenth-century England. Here the author shows that by valorizing textual skills over martial prowess, humanism provided a new means of upward mobility for the lowborn but humanistically trained scholar: he could move into a highly intimate place in a nobleman's household that was previously not open to him. Because of its novelty and secrecy, the intimacy between master and scholar was vulnerable to accusations of another type of intimacy--sodomy. In comparing the ways both humanism and sodomy signaled a new economy of social relations capable of producing widespread anxiety, Stewart contributes to the foray of modern gay scholarship into Renais-sance art and literature. The author explores the intriguing relationship between humanism and sodomy in a series of case studies: the Medici court of the 1470s, the allegations against monks in the campaign to suppress the English monasteries, the institutionalized beating of young boys, the treacherous circle of the doomed Sir Thomas Seymour, and the closet secretaries of Elizabeth's final years. Stewart's documentation comes from a wide range of underused materials, from schoolboys' grammar books to political writings, enabling him to reconstruct frequently misunderstood events in their original contexts. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Kent Cartwright
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139425994
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
English drama at the beginning of the sixteenth century was allegorical, didactic and moralistic; but by the end of the century theatre was censured as emotional and even immoral. How could such a change occur? Kent Cartwright suggests that some theories of early Renaissance theatre - particularly the theory that Elizabethan plays are best seen in the tradition of morality drama - need to be reconsidered. He proposes instead that humanist drama of the sixteenth century is theatrically exciting - rather than literary, elitist and dull as it has often been seen - and socially significant, and he attempts to integrate popular and humanist values rather than setting them against each other. Taking as examples the plays of Marlowe, Heywood, Lyly and Greene, as well as many by lesser-known dramatists, the book demonstrates the contribution of humanist drama to the theatrical vitality of the sixteenth century.
Author: Neil Rhodes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198704100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
A study of the development of literary culture in sixteenth-century England that explores the relationship between the Reformation and literary renaissance of the Elizabethan period through the exploration of the theme of the 'common'.
Author: Mary Thomas Crane
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400863317
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
Writers in sixteenth-century England often kept commonplace books in which to jot down notable fragments encountered during reading or conversation, but few critics have fully appreciated the formative influence this activity had on humanism. Focusing on the discursive practices of "gathering" textual fragments and "framing" or forming, arranging, and assimilating them, Mary Crane shows how keeping commonplace books made up the English humanists' central transaction with antiquity and provided an influential model for authorial practice and authoritative self-fashioning. She thereby revises our perceptions of English humanism, revealing its emphasis on sayings, collectivism, shared resources, anonymous inscription, and balance of power--in contrast to an aristocratic mode of thought, which championed individualism, imperialism, and strong assertion of authorial voice. Crane first explores the theory of gathering and framing as articulated in influential sixteenth-century logic and rhetoric texts and in the pedagogical theory with which they were linked in the humanist project. She then investigates the practice of humanist discourse through a series of texts that exemplify the notebook method of composition. These texts include school curricula, political and economic treatises (such as More's Utopia), contemporary biography, and collections of epigrams and poetic miscellanies. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Bard Thompson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802863485
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 801
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Book Description
Humanists and Reformers portrays in a single, expansive volume two great traditions in human history: the Italian Renaissance and the age of the Reformation. / Bard Thompson provides a fascinating survey of these important historical periods under pressure of their own cultural, social, and spiritual experiences, exploring the bonds that held Humanists and Reformers together and the estrangements that drove them apart. / Writing for students and general readers, Thompson offers a comprehensive account of all the major figures of the Renaissance and the Reformation, probing their thoughts, aspirations, and differences. / Accentuating the text are illustrations that provide a stunning panorama of the personalities, art, and architecture of these key historical periods.
Author: Alan Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190864672
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear that the Allies would win the Second World War. Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals-Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others-sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world. In this book, Alan Jacobs explores the poems, novels, essays, reviews, and lectures of these five central figures, in which they presented, with great imaginative energy and force, pictures of the very different paths now set before the Western democracies. Working mostly separately and in ignorance of one another's ideas, the five developed a strikingly consistent argument that the only means by which democratic societies could be prepared for their world-wide economic and political dominance was through a renewal of education that was grounded in a Christian understanding of the power and limitations of human beings. The Year of Our Lord 1943 is the first book to weave together the ideas of these five intellectuals and shows why, in a time of unprecedented total war, they all thought it vital to restore Christianity to a leading role in the renewal of the Western democracies.
