Including authoritative texts of poems by twenty-three major and minor poets -- from John Donne, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson to George Gasciogne and Fulke Greville -- and Williams' critical preface, English Renaissance Poetry remains an invaluable introductory anthology of short poems from our first modem poetry.

When we read poetry, we tend to believe that we are getting a glimpse of the interior of the poet's mind--pictures from the poet's imagination relayed through the representative power of language. But poets themselves sometimes express doubt (usually indirectly) that poetic language has the capability or the purpose of revealing these images. This book examines description in Renaissance poetry, aiming to reveal its complexity and variability, its distinctiveness from prose description, and what it can tell us about Renaissance ways of thinking about the visible world and the poetic mind. Recent criticism has tended to address representation as a product of culture; The Unimagined in the English Renaissance argues to the contrary that attention to description as a literary phenomenon can complicate its cultural context by recognizing the persistent problems of genre and literary history. The book focuses on Sidney, Spenser, Donne, and Milton, who had very different aims as poets but shared a degree of skepticism about imagistic representation. For these poets, description can obscure as much as it makes visible, and can create whole categories of existence that are outside of visibility altogether.

Including authoritative texts of poems by twenty-three major and minor poets--from John Donne, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson to George Gasciogne and Fulke Greville--and Williams' critical preface, English Renaissance Poetry remains an invaluable introductory anthology of short poems from our first modern poetry.

"An exciting collection of essays on English Renaissance literature and culture, this book contributes substantially to the contemporary renaissance in historical modes of critical inquiry."--Margaret W. Ferguson, Columbia University "An exciting collection of essays on English Renaissance literature and culture, this book contributes substantially to the contemporary renaissance in historical modes of critical inquiry."--Margaret W. Ferguson, Columbia University

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.

This title establishes the radical currents of thought shaping Renaissance poetry: civic humanism and apocalyptic Protestantism. The author shows how Elizabethan poets like Sidney and Spenser, often seen as conservative monarchists, responded powerfully if sometimes ambivalently to radical ideas.

This comprehensive anthology collects together primary texts and documents relevant to the literature, culture, and intellectual life in England between 1550 and 1660.

Katarzyna Lecky explores how early modern British poets paid by the state adapted inclusive modes of nationhood charted by inexpensive, small-format maps. She explores chapbooks ('cheapbooks') by Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, Ben Jonson, William Davenant, and John Milton alongside the portable cartography circulating in the same retail print industry. Domestic pocket maps were designed for heavy use by a broad readership that included those on the fringes of literacy. The era's de facto laureates all banked their success as writers appealing to this burgeoning market share by drawing the nation as the property of the commonwealth rather than the Crown. This book investigates the accessible world of small-format cartography as it emerges in the texts of the poets raised in the expansive public sphere in which pocket maps flourished. It works at the intersections of space, place, and national identity to reveal the geographical imaginary shaping the flourishing business of cheap print. Its placement of poetic economies within mainstream systems of trade also demonstrates how cartography and poetry worked together to mobilize average consumers as political agents. This everyday form of geographic poiesis was also a strong platform for poets writing for monarchs and magistrates when their visions of the nation ran counter to the interests of the government.

Featuring entries composed by leading international scholars, The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature presents comprehensive coverage of all aspects of English literature produced from the early 16th to the mid 17th centuries. Comprises over 400 entries ranging from 1000 to 5000 words written by leading international scholars Arranged in A-Z format across three fully indexed and cross-referenced volumes Provides coverage of canonical authors and their works, as well as a variety of previously under-considered areas, including women writers, broadside ballads, commonplace books, and other popular literary forms Biographical material on authors is presented in the context of cutting-edge critical discussion of literary works. Represents the most comprehensive resource available for those working in English Renaissance literary studies Also available online as part of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature, providing 24/7 access and powerful searching, browsing and cross-referencing capabilities

This remarkable collection of original essays by a distinguished group of American and English scholars explores attitudes toward apocalyptic thought and the Book of Revelation as they were reflected, over many centuries, in theological discourse, political activity, and artistic and literary endeavors.