Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: A Student's Guide

Front Cover
Psychology Press, 1994 - 233 pages

Since publication in 1979 Isabel Rivers' sourcebook has established itself as the essential guide to English Renaissance poetry. It:

  • provides an account of the main classical and Christian ideas, outlining their meaning, their origins and their transmission to the Renaissance;
  • illustrates the ways in which Renaissance poetry drew on classical and Christian ideas;
  • contains extracts from key classical and Christian texts and relates these to the extracts of the English poems which draw on them;
  • includes suggestions for further reading, and an invaluable bibliographical appendix.
 

Contents

Renaissance Poetry and Modern Readers
1
1 The Golden Age and the Garden of Eden
9
2 The Pagan Gods
21
3 Platonism and Neoplatonism
35
4 Stoicism
45
5 Views of History
55
6 Cosmology
69
7 Reformation and CounterReformation
89
10 Biblical Exegesis and Typology
139
11 Theories of Poetry
149
12 Allegory
159
13 Numerology
169
A Note on the Division of Historical Periods
181
Abbreviations
183
References
185
Further Reading
193

8 Protestant Theology
107
9 Humanism
125
Bibliographical Appendix
205
Author Index
227

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