Humanism And Good Books In Sixteenth Century England

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.

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.

The term 'humanist' originally referred to a scholar of Classical literature. In the Renaissance and particularly in the Elizabethan age, European intellectuals devoted themselves to the rediscovery and study of Roman and Greek literature and culture. This trend of Renaissance thought became known in the 19th century as 'humanism'. Often a difficult concept to understand, the term Elizabethan Humanism is introduced in Part One and explained in a number of different contexts. Part Two illustrates how knowledge of humanism allows a clearer understanding of Elizabethan literature, by looking closely at major texts of the Elizabethan period which include Spenser's, 'The Shepherd's Calendar'; Marlowe's 'Faustus' and Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'.

Humanism is usually thought to come to England in the early sixteenth century. In this book, however, Daniel Wakelin uncovers the almost unknown influences of humanism on English literature in the preceding hundred years. He considers the humanist influences on the reception of some of Chaucer's work and on the work of important authors such as Lydgate, Bokenham, Caxton, and Medwall, and in many anonymous or forgotten translations, political treatises, and documents from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. At the heart of his study is a consideration of William Worcester, the fifteenth-century scholar. Wakelin can trace the influence of humanism much earlier than was thought, because he examines evidence in manuscripts and early printed books of the English study and imitation of antiquity, in polemical marginalia on classical works, and in the ways in which people copied and shared classical works and translations. He also examines how various English works were shaped by such reading habits and, in turn, how those English works reshaped the reading habits of the wider community. Humanism thus, contrary to recent strictures against it, appears not as 'top-down' dissemination, but as a practical process of give-and-take between writers and readers. Humanism thus also prompts writers to imagine their potential readerships in ways which challenge them to re-imagine the political community and the intellectual freedom of the reader. Our views both of the fifteenth century and of humanist literature in English are transformed.

This collection of essays by an international team of experts, explores the wideranging impact of Renaissance humanism on sixteenth century England. Investigating areas as diverse as art, education, religion, political thought, literature and science, the book offers fresh and challenging accounts of prominent Tudor figures such as Thomas More, William Tyndale and John Foxe. As well as historiographical overviews of the subject and a discussion of the fifteenth century background to Tudor developments, one of the book's central themes is the nature of England's fundamental cultural experiences in relation to continental Europe.

This important contribution to the study of English Renaissance culture redefines the humanist movement, employs humanist rhetoric in new ways, and argues that English fiction in the sixteenth century should be seen as a major genre with its own strategies for the imaginative artist. Arthur F. Kinney argues that the main purpose of Renaissance humanism was the cultivation and perfection of the individual and society by the use of rhetoric?by persuasion. Humanist poetics, then, is the poetics of rhetoric: the attempt to fashion the self or the reader by a fiction that employs rhetoric's means. By tracing classical resources and the intertextuality of major English works from More's Utopia to Lodge's Rosalynde and Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller, Kinney not only locates basic Elizabethan habits of mind but also shows where the roots of the English novel may ultimately lie.

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.

"During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the technology for making books was changing and, with the introduction of printing, books were being put to new uses by an emergent group of professional humanists. David Carlson sees a fundamental point of intersection between humanist culture in England - then just beginning - and the books produced by humanists. Using manuscripts and printed books as his material for discussion of the development of humanist print culture n England, he links it to the traditions of English patronage and court life, and includes analysis of other sources of literary activity in the new learning, as, for instance, at the universities." "Carlson points out that for fifty or one hundred years following the invention of printing, publication was not synonymous with publication in print. At the same time writing enjoyed a greater fluidity, since a wide range of publication options were available to writers - all of them legitimate means for delivering texts to an interested public. Writers, printers, and their patrons were aware of the different kinds of books. These included deluxe presentation manuscripts, sometimes used in combination with printed copies; the invention of collected works for manuscript or printed publication; and authorial revision and republication for print. Carlson also examines the ways writers used printers, and printers used writers; and how writers manipulated the different forms of publication."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved