RENAISSANCE LITERATURE, LITERARY THEORY AND RHETORIC

History Regions Topics

RENAISSANCE LITERATURE, LITERARY THEORY AND RHETORIC
(c. 1400 - c. 1600)

SUB-PAGES

Feminist:

Renaissance Feminist Thought / Feminist Perspectives on Renaissance Thought

Post-colonial:

Renaissance Non-Western Thought / Post-colonial Perspectives on Renaissance Thought

ASSOCIATIONS

Early Modern Image and Text Society (EMIT)

CONFERENCES

2009:

Literary Theorists of Late Renaissance Italy, University of Agder, Norway, July 4-5

2008:

2007:

2006:

Word, Image, and Ideology in Habsburg Europe, Early Modern Image and Text Society (EMIT), Denver, October 19-21

2005:

2004:

Shakespeare and Philosophy, Forum for European Philosophy, London School of Economics, November 20

2003:

2002:

2001:

2000:

JOURNALS

English Literary Renaissance

PERSONS

Literary Authors:

France:
- François Rabelais (c.1494 – 1553)
- Pierre de Ronsard (1524 – 1585)
- Joachim du Bellay (c.1525 – 1560)
Germany:
Italy:
Spain:
UK:

Literary Theorists:

In Chronological Order:
- Lodovico Castelvetro (1505 - 1571)
- Joachim du Bellay (c.1525 – 1560)
- George Puttenham (c.1529 - 1590)
- Torquato Tasso (1544 - 1595)
- Jacopo Mazzoni (1548 - 1598)
- Sir Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586)
- Stephen Gosson (1555 - 1624)
- Ben Jonson (1572 - 1637)
By Nationality:
- France:
  - Joachim du Bellay (c.1525 – 1560)
- Germany:
- Italy:
  - Lodovico Castelvetro (1505 - 1571)
  - Torquato Tasso (1544 - 1595)
  - Jacopo Mazzoni (1548 - 1598)
- Spain:
- UK:

Rhetoricians:

In Chronological Order:
By Nationality:
- France:
  - Petrus Ramus (1515 - 1572)
- Germany:
- Italy:
  - Baldassare Castiglione (1478 - 1529)
- Netherlands:
  - Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536)
- Spain:
  - Juan Luis Vives (1492 - 1540)
- UK:
  - Thomas Wilson (1525 - 1581)

SOURCES: PRIMARY

Off-Line:

Anthologies:
- Literature:
  - Witherspoon, Alexander, and Frank Warnke, eds. Seventeenth Century Prose and Poetry.
- Literary Theory:
  - Hardison, O. B., ed. English Literary Criticism: the Renaissance
  - Smith, Gregory G., ed. Elizabethan Critical Essays. 1904.
  - Vickery, Brian, ed. English Renaissance Literary Criticism. Oxford: OUP, 1999.
- Rhetoric:
Selected Individual Works:
- Literature:
- Literary Theory:
  - Mazzoni, Jacopo. Della Defesa della Commedia di Dante. 1587.
    - "On the Defence of the Comedy of Dante." Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed. Hazard Adams. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1971. 164-174.
  - Tasso, Torquato. Discorsi del Poema Eroica. 1594.
    - "Discourses on the Heroic Poem." Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed. Hazard Adams. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1971. 176-182.
- Rhetoric:
  - Cox, Leonard. The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke. c. 1524-1530; 2nd Ed. 1532.
  - Day, Angel. The English Secretorie. 1586, 1592.
  - Rainholde, Richard. Foundacion of Rhetorike. 1563.
  - Talaeus, Audomarus [Omer Talon]. Institutiones Oratoriae. 1544.

On-Line:

SOURCES: SECONDARY

Off-Line:

Anthologies:
- Literary Criticism:
  - General:
    - Brown, Cedric, ed. Patronage, Politics, and Literary Traditions in England, 1558-1658
    - Burt, Richard, et al., eds. Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property and Culture in Early Modern England
    - Corns, Thomas, ed. The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell
    - De Grazia, Margaret, et al., eds. Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture
    - Dubrow, Heather, et al., eds. The Historical Renaissance: New Essays on Tudor and Stuart Literature and Culture
    - Garber, Marjorie, ed. Cannibals, Witches, Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance
    - Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance
    - Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. Representing the Renaissance
    - Kinney, Arthur, et al., eds. Renaissance Historicism
    - Lytle, Guy, and Stephen Orgel, eds. Patronage in the Renaissance
    - Malcolmson, Christina, ed. Renaissance Poetry
    - Parker, Patricia, et al., eds. Literary Theory / Renaissance Texts
    - Stallybrass, Peter, et al., eds. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression
    - Zunder, William, et al, eds. Writing and the English Renaissance
  - Sixteenth Century:
    - Alpers, Paul, ed. Elizabethan Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism
    - Brown, John Russell, ed. Elizabethan Poetry
    - Herman, P. C., eds. Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essays in Early Tudor Texts and Contexts
    - Pearsall, Derek, ed. Chaucer to Spenser: a Critical Reader
  - Seventeenth Century:
    - Barker, Francis, et al., eds. 1642: Literature and Power in the Seventeenth Century
    - Bloom, Clive, ed. Jacobean Poetry and Prose
    - Bradbury, Malcolm, ed. Metaphysical Poetry
    - Hammond, Gerald, ed. The Metaphysical Poets
    - Harvey, Elizabeth, et al., eds. Soliciting Interpretation: Literary Theory and Seventeenth Century English Poetry
    - Healy, Thomas, et al., eds. Literature and the English Civil War
    - Keast, William, ed. Seventeenth Century English Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism
    - Sharpe, Kevin, et al., eds. Politics of Discourse: the Literature and History of Seventeenth Century England
    - Summers, Claude, et al., eds. ‘The Muses’ Common-Weale’: Poetry and Politics in the Seventeenth Century
    - Summers, Claude, et al., eds. Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson and the Sons of Ben
    - Zwicker, Stephen, et al., eds. Politics of Discourse: the Literature and History of Seventeenth Century England
- Literary Theory:
  - Norton, Glyn P., ed. The Renaissance. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1999.
- Rhetoric:
  - Murphy, James J. Ed. Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric. Berkeley: U of California P, 1983.
Selected Individual Works:
- Literary Criticism:
  - General:
    - Babcock, Barbara. The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society
    - Barker, Francis. The Tremulous Private Body: Essays on Subjection
    - Bush, Douglas The Renaissance and English Humanism
    - Demaray, John Cosmos and Epic Representation: Dante, Spenser, Milton and the Transformation of Renaissance Heroic Poetry
    - Dubrow, Heather Echoes of Desire: English Petrarchism and its Counterdiscourses
    - Greenblatt, Stephen Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture
    - Greenblatt, Stephen Renaissance Self-Fashioning
    - Gregerson, Linda The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton and the Protestant Epic
    - Guillory, John Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton and Literary History
    - Halperin, Richard The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy of Capital
    - Helgerson, Richard Self-Crowned Laureates: Spenser, Jonson, Milton, and the Literary System
    - Kegl, Rosemary The Rhetoric of Concealment: Figuring Gender and Class in Renaissance Literature
    - Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Thought and the Arts: Collected Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1964.
    - Leavis, F. R. Revaluation: Tradition and Development in English Poetry
    - Manley, Lawrence Literature and Culture in Early Modern London
    - Marcus, Leah The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defence of Old Holiday Pastimes
    - Norbrook, David Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance
    - Parfitt, George. English Poetry of the Seventeenth Century
    - Pask, Kevin The Emergence of the English Author
    - Patterson, Annabel Censorship and Interpretation: the Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England
    - Roche, Thomas Petrarch and the English Sonnet Tradition
    - Rogers, John The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton
    - Sinfield, Alan Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading
    - Strier, Richard Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism and Renaissance Texts
    - Gary Waller English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century
    - Zunder, William, et al, eds. Writing and the English Renaissance
  - Sixteenth Century:
    - Berry, Philippa Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen
    - Crewe, Jonathan Trials of Authorship: Anterior Forms and Poetic Reconstruction from Wyatt to Shakespeare
    - Ferry, Anne The ‘Inward’ Language: Sonnets of Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne
    - Hammond, Gerald, ed. Elizabethan Poetry: Lyric and Narrative
    - Heale, Elizabeth Wyatt, Surrey, and Early Tudor Poetry
    - Helgerson, Richard Forms of Nationhood: the Elizabethan Writing of England
    - Helgerson, Richard The Elizabethan Prodigals
    - Inglis, Fred The Elizabethan Poets
    - Javitch, Daniel Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England
    - Lever, J. W. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet
    - Lewis, C. S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama
    - Montrose, Louis Adrian "'Eliza, Queene of Shepheardes', and 'the Pastoral of Power'" ELR 10 (1980): 153-182 (also in Arthur Kinney, et al., eds. Renaissance Historicism)
    - Montrose, Louis Adrian "The Elizabethan Subject and the Spenserian Text" (in Patricia Parker, et al., eds. Literary Theory / Renaissance Texts)
    - Montrose, Louis Adrian "A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Shaping Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power, Form" (in Stephen Greenblatt, ed. Representing the Renaissance)
    - Montrose, Louis Adrian "Of Gentlemen and Shepherds: The Politics of Elizabethan Pastoral Form" ELH 50 (1983): 415-459
    - Montrose, Louis Adrian The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre
    - Peterson, Douglas The English Lyric from Wyatt to Donne
    - Spearing, A. C. Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry
    - Tuve, Rosalind Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery
    - Wright, Louis Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan Britain
    - Yates, Frances Astraea: the Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century
  - Seventeenth Century:
    - Corns, Thomas Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640-1660
    - Dollimore, Jonathan Radical Tragedy
    - Goldberg, Jonathan James I and the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne and their Contemporaries
    - Hammond, Gerald Fleeting Things: English Poets and Poems, 1616-1660
    - Knights, L. C. Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson
    - Loxley, James Royalism and Poetry in the English Civil War
    - Miner, Earl The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton
    - Parry, Graham The Seventeenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1603-1700
    - Post, Jonathan English Lyric Poetry: the Early Seventeenth Century
    - Rivers, Isabel Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry
    - Sambrook, James. The Eighteenth Century: the Intellectual and Cultural Context, 1700-1789.
    - Sharpe, Kevin Criticism and Compliment: the Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I
    - Smith, Nigel Literature and Revolution, 1640-1660
    - Summers, Joseph The Heirs of Donne and Jonson
    - Turner, James The Politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry, 1630-1660
    - White, Helen The Metaphysical Poets
    - Wilding, Michael Dragons Teeth: Literature in the English Revolution
    - Zwicker, Stephen Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture
  - Topics:
    - Classicism:
      - Bush, Douglas Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry
      - Highet, G. The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature
      - Martindale, Charles Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century
      - Miles, Geoffrey, ed. Classical Mythology in English Literature: a Critical Anthology
      - Quint, David Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton
      - Lord, George Classical Presences in Seventeenth Century English Poetry
      - Rivers, Isabel Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: a Student’s Guide
      - Sowerby, Robin The Classical Legacy in Renaissance Poetry
      - Thomson, J. A. K. The Classical Background of English Literature
      - Thomson, J. A. K. Classical Influences on English Poetry
      - Tillyard, E. M. W. The English Epic and its Background
    - Christianity:
      - Lewalski, Barbara Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth Century Religious Lyric
      - Low, Anthony Love’s Architecture: Devotional Modes in Seventeenth Century English Poetry
      - Martz, Louis The Poetry of Meditation: a Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century
      - Martz, Louis The Poem of the Mind
      - Rivers, Isabel Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry
      - Roberts, John, ed. New Perspectives on the Seventeenth Century Religious Lyric
      - Shuger, Deborah The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity
      - Sinfield, Alan Literature in Protestant England 1550-1660
      - Summers, Claude, et al., eds. ‘Bright Shootes of Everlastingnesse’: the Seventeenth Century Religious Lyric
    - Genres:
      - Alpers, Paul What is Pastoral?
      - Colie, Rosalie Resources of Kind: Genre-Theory in the Renaissance
      - Empson, William Some Versions of Pastoral
      - Fletcher, Angus Allegory: Theory of a Symbolic Mode
      - Gifford, Terry Pastoral
      - Greene, Roland. "The Lyric." The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 216-228.
      - Gregerson, Linda The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton and the Protestant Epic
      - Highet, G. The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature
      - Kermode, Frank English Pastoral Poetry: from the Beginnings to Marvell
      - Lewalski, Barbara Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History and Interpretation
      - Lever, J. W. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet
      - Marinelli, Peter Pastoral
      - Martindale, Charles Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century
      - Oppenheimer, Paul The Birth of the Modern Mind: Self, Consciousness, and the Invention of the Sonnet
      - Patterson, Annabel Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valery
      - Peterson, Douglas The English Lyric from Wyatt to Donne
      - Poggioli, Renato The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal
      - Reiss, Timothy J. "Renaissance Theatre and the Theory of Tragedy."
      - Quilligan, Maureen The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre
      - Quint, David Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton
      - Tillyard, E. M. W. The English Epic and its Background
      - Williams, Raymond The Country and the City
- Literary Theory:
  - Socio-Historical Context:
    - Manley, Lawrence. "Criticism and the Metropolis: Tudor-Stuart London." The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 339-347.
    - Robin, Diana. "Culture, Imperialism and Humanist Criticism in the Italian City-State." The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 355-363.
    - Schoenfeldt, Michael. "Courts and Patronage." The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 371-377.
  - General:
    - Atkins, J. W. H. English Literary Criticism: the Renascence. London: Methuen, 1947.
    - Daiches, David. "The Poet as Moral Teacher." Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Norton, 1956. 50-72.
    - Harland, Richard. "The Rise and Fall of Neoclassicism." Literary Theory from Plato to Barthes. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. 29-59.
    - Javitch, Daniel. "The Assimilation of Aristotle's Poetics in Sexteenth Century Italy." The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 53-65.
    - Moss, Ann. "Horace in teh Sixteenth Century: Commentators into Critics." The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 66-76.
    - Spingarn, J. E. Literary Criticism in the Renaissance. 1899.
    - Weinberg, Bernard. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. 2 Vols. 1963.
    - Wimsatt, William, and Cleanth Brooks. "The Sixteenth Century." Literary Criticism: a Short History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. 155-173.
- Rhetoric:
  - Abbott, Don. Rhetoric in the New World. Columbus: U of South Carolina P, 1996.
  - Abbott, Don. "The Renaissance." The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric. Ed. W. Horner. Rev. Ed. U of Missouri P, 1990.
  - Goyet, Francis. Le Sublime du 'lieu commun': l'Invention rhétorique dans l'Antiquité et à la Renaissance. Honoré Champion, 1996.
  - Howell, Wilbur S. Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1956.
  - Jeanneret, Michel. "Renaissance Exegesis." The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. 36-43.
  - Kahn, Victoria. Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.
  - Lanham, Richard A. The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance. New Haven: Yale UP, 1976. Rev. Ed. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004.
  - Robins, R. H. "The Renaissance and After." A Short History of Linguistics. New York: Longman, 1967. 4th Ed. 1997. 110-151.
  - Seigel, Jerrold. Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism: the Union of Eloquence and Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla. 1980.
  - Sonino, Lee A. A Handbook of Sixteenth Century Rhetorics.
  - Streuver, Nancy S. The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine Humanism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970.
  - Thebeaux, . Emergence of a Tradition: Technical Writing in the English Renaissance, 1475-1640. Amityville, NY: Bayworth, 1996.
  - Vickers, Brian. "Rhetoric and Poetics." Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Ed. C. B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler, and Jill Kraye. Cambridge: CUP, 1988. 715-745.
  - Vickers, Brian. Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1989.
  - Waswo, Richard. "The Rise of the Vernaculars." The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 409-416.
  - Waswo, Richard. "Theories of Language." The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Vol. 3 of Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 25-35.

On-Line:

Luminarium: Sixteenth Century Renaissance English Literature (1485-1603)
Norton Anthology of English Literature:
Weisinger, Herbert: Renaissance Literature and Historiography (Dictionary of the History of Ideas)
Wikipedia Encyclopedia:
- Renaissance Literature

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