A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) is a literary guide written by Thomas Purney, here analyzing and researching the workings of pastoral literature, a genre encompassing both prose and poetry that reflects on the natural world, generally focusing on the human relationship to nature in rural environments and painting it in an idyllic light.
English historians in the Middle Ages is an overview of the history of English historians and their works in the Middle Ages. English historians helped lay the groundwork for modern historical methodology, provided vital accounts of the early history of England, its culture, and revelations about the historians themselves.The most remarkable period of historical writting was during the High Middle Ages in the 12th and 13th centuries, when English chronicles produced works with a variety of interest, wealth of information and amplitude of range. However one might choose to view the reliability.
This book examines Edmund Spenser's essays. It presents the criticisms of John Dryden, which are determined by his own preoccupations than by his reading of other critics, and contains three larger sections (covering the periods 1579-1600, 1600-1660, 1660-1715) into which all this material falls.
The Oxford History of Classical Reception (OHCREL) is designed to offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge new research, employing an international team of expert contributors for each of the five volumes. OHCREL endeavours to interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate, conventional assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of canon-formation, and the relations between literary and non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own cultural context. This second volume covers the years 1558-1660, and explores the reception of the ancient genres and authors in English Renaissance literature, engaging with the major, and many of the minor, writers of the period, including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, and Jonson. Separate chapters examine the Renaissance institutions and contexts which shape the reception of antiquity, and an annotated bibliography provides substantial material for further reading.
What is Restoration comedy? What pleasure does it offer its audience, and what significance does it find in exploring that pleasure? Edward Burns here provides a new account of the origins and nature of Restoration comedy as a distinct genre. The book enlarges the usual focus with a wider range of writers than the conventional ossified canon taking in a revaluation of many rarely studied dramatists, a reconsideration of pastoral, and the instatement of women writers as major contributors to the culture of the age. It offers a substantial and original interpretation of one of the most intriguing of seventeenth-century literature forms.
