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.

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.

The appearance of a fourth printing of The Renaissance and English Humanism indicated the scholarly success this book has enjoyed for more than a decade. As a brief yet thoughtful and eloquent evaluation of the influence of the Christian humanistic tradition upon our culture it has not been surpassed. The study is divided into four parts: in the first, Professor Bush discusses modern theories of the Renaissance; in the second and third, the character of classical humanism on the Continent and in England; and in the fourth, the place of Milton in the humanistic tradition. "Douglas Bush has shown an unusual awareness," wrote Wallace K. Ferguson, "of the historiographical evolution of the Renaissance, and has taken his stand with rare explicitness on the side of those who find the Renaissance filled with mediaeval traditions." Professor Bush sees the dominant ideal of the English Renaissance as rational and religious order, rather than rebellious individualism, and his view has provided an important clue to the English literature and thought of the 16th and the earlier 17th century.

By far the best collection of sources to introduce readers to Renaissance humanism in all its many guises. What distinguishes this stimulating and useful anthology is the vision behind it: King shows that Renaissance thinkers had a lot to say, not only about the ancient world--one of their habitual passions--but also about the self, how civic experience was configured, the arts, the roles and contributions of women, the new science, the 'new' world, and so much more. --Christopher S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University

This book explores how machinery and the practice of mechanics participate in the intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism. Before the emergence of the modern concept of technology, sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century writers recognized the applicability of mechanical practices and objects to some of their most urgent moral, aesthetic, and political questions. The construction, use, and representation of devices including clocks, scientific instruments, stage machinery, and war engines not only reflect but also actively reshape how Renaissance writers define and justify artifice and instrumentality - the reliance upon instruments, mechanical or otherwise, to achieve a particular end. Harnessing the discipline of mechanics to their literary and philosophical concerns, scholars and poets including Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, George Chapman, and Gabriel Harvey look to machinery to ponder and dispute all manner of instrumental means, from rhetoric and pedagogy to diplomacy and courtly dissimulation.

This new textbook provides students with a highly readable synthesis of the major determining features of the European Renaissance, one of the most influential cultural revolutions in history. Professor Nauert's approach is broader than the traditional focus on Italy, and tackles the themes in the wider European context. He traces the origins of the humanist 'movement' and connects it to the social and political environments in which it developed. In a tour-de-force of lucid exposition over six wide-ranging chapters, Nauert charts the key intellectual, social, educational and philosophical concerns of this humanist revolution, using art and biographical sketches of key figures to illuminate the discussion. The study also traces subsequent transformations of humanism and its solvent effect on intellectual developments in the late Renaissance.

First comprehensive introduction to women's role in, and access to, literary culture in early modern Britain.