This work is an account of Elizabethan humanism, dedicated to the Elizabethan period of Renaissance writing. It offers a new approach to the topic by using records of the words humanity and humanist to establish an understanding of the word humanism.

SEMINAR STUDIES IN HISTORYGeneral Editors: Clive Emsley & Gordon MartelThe effort to abolish slavery produced the Atlantic world's great reform movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.This book focuses on the American abolitionists who struggled against slavery and advocated equal rights for African Americans in the United States. Blacks, whites, men and women, southern slaves and northern agitators became participants in the conflict between North and South that led to the Civil War in 1861 and general emancipation in 1865. Some of these activists advocated non-violence, while...

Paradise Lost is not merely the masterpiece of John Milton (1608-74) but a turning point in style and form, which had a profound influence on the poetry of the following century. Divided into two parts, this major survey begins by discussing the revolutionary characteristics of Paradise Lost in the context of contemporary literary norms and examines the theological, psychological, stylistic and narrative innovation in the poem. It then provides a fuller account of the complex, and now obscure political, and theological issues and other issues that Milton's poem addresses and...

This text examines the influence Italian and English writers have had on each other and looks at both the similarities and the differences between the two literary traditions. The historical, social and intellectual developments between the two countries in the early Renaissance are explored.

In this completely re-written edition, Professor Brewer has taken into account recent literary criticism, both challenging new ideas and using them to analyse Chaucer's work. He has also included a more detailed account of The Book of the Duchess.

The focus of this book, and the choice of poets that goes with it, follows the modern inclination. The author is at pains to emphasize the vagueness of the term metaphysical when considering the poets considered in the text.

The late 14th century produced a crop of brilliant writers: Chaucer, Langland and Gower. Their achievement was rivalled only by a series of four works generally agreed to have been written by a single northern author, known as the Gawain-Poet. This book introduces the reader to the Gawain-poet's four surviving works: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, Pearl and Cleanness. The four poems are made accessible to the student by setting them in their relevant historical and cultural context and by developing some lines of critical argument. All studies are based on the...