Humanism and Good Books in Sixteenth Century England is popular PDF and ePub book, written by Katherine C. Little in 2023-02-23, it is a fantastic choice for those who relish reading online the Literary Criticism genre. Let's immerse ourselves in this engaging Literary Criticism book by exploring the summary and details provided below. Remember, Humanism and Good Books in Sixteenth Century England can be Read Online from any device for your convenience.
Humanism and Good Books in Sixteenth Century England Book PDF Summary
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.
Detail Book of Humanism and Good Books in Sixteenth Century England PDF
- Author : Katherine C. Little
- Release : 23 February 2023
- Publisher : Oxford University Press
- ISBN : 9780192883216
- Genre : Literary Criticism
- Total Page : 241 pages
- Language : English
- PDF File Size : 20,6 Mb
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