Ceremony and Civility in English Renaissance Prose analyzes the emergence of civil prose in texts of the early modern period and defends English Renaissance writers against the current attack on their aristocratic politics.

Using Thomas More's History of King Richard III, Philip Sydney's Defense of Poetry, Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, Anne Hall demonstrates the emerging differentiation of civil and ceremonial prose in the early modern period. These works combine ceremonial discourse,...