Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Renaissance

The emblem was one of the most distinctive of Renaissance art forms, lending itself to the concrete manifestation of the deeply-rooted Renaissance belief in the interrelationship between painting and poetry. Emblems, typically consisting of a combination of motto, picture, and poem, had a didactic as well as illustrative function, and were used to expound an ethical or moral truth.

Henry Peacham's Manuscript Emblem Books is a collection of four emblem manuscripts by the noted seventeenth-century humanist scholar, Henry Peacham. The volume includes three books based on King...

The final two volumes in the CWE contain an edition and translation of Erasmus's poetry. For Erasmus scholars this work affords the first opportunity to evaluate and analyse Erasmus' poems in English. And for those interested in Renaissance and Reformation poetry in general, these offer an intriguing look at the work of one of the towering figures of the period writing in a genre that was, for him, unusual.

The annotations include a path-breaking commentary piece by Harry Vredeveld on Erasmus' most famous poem, Poem on the Trouble of Old Age.' Another important feature is the...

In Lodovico Dolce: Renaissance Man of Letters, Ronnie Terpening revives and reassesses the work of a minor but significant sixteenth-century humanist, said to have led a life 'both wretched and glorious.' Although Dolce (1510? - 1568) gained universal renown in his own century and was considered a cultivated scholar and writer, few today recognize his importance as one of the major transmitters of culture in Cinquecento Italy. This is the first comprehensive study in English of the literary works of Dolce. It integrates a critical rereading of his writings with a history of the...

This new volume of the CWE presents three of Erasmus' polemic works against Alberto Pio, Prince of Carpi. A leading diplomat of the period, patron of artists and humanists, and conservative Catholic, Pio continually angered Erasmus by criticizing him for his denunciations of church practices and officials, and by accusing him of supporting Luther and holding dangerous opinions. The texts are lucid, passionate, and even vitriolic at times.

The introduction by Nelson H. Minnich provides a biography of Pio, an overview of the controversy and related texts, and a bibliographical...

The mother's advice book represents a distinctly female literary genre appearing in seventeenth-century England. According to the conventions of this form, a mother leaves written instructions, of a predominantly spiritual nature, as a legacy to her children. The Mothers Legacy, written by Elizabeth Joscelin, is particularly significant for its documentation of ideas about women's education, authorship, and spirituality. With her writing, the author inscribes a distinctly female Protestant perspective. Moreover, as a highly self-conscious text, sophisticated in its use of rhetoric and...

Erasmus' Familiar Colloquies grew from a small collection of phrases, sentences, and snatches of dialogue written in Paris about 1497 to help his private pupils improve their command of Latin. Twenty years later the material was published by Johann Froben (Basel 1518). It was an immediate success and was reprinted thirty times in the next four years. For the edition of March 1522 Erasmus began to add fully developed dialogues, and a book designed to improve boys' use of Latin (and their deportment) soon became a work of literature for adults, although it retained traces of its...

'A judicious and discerning selection of large extracts from the Collected Works of Erasmus ... thoughtfully designed to include major statements of Erasmus on civility in individual morals, humanistic study and education, the Christian life, reform of the church, and the peaceful constraint of political force. It is to my mind the most comprehensive and penetrating anthology of Erasmus' writing, forcefully revealing his central values.' - Charles Trinkaus, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Michigan

'Rummel's collection makes available...