English Poetry in the Sixteenth Century

London: Hutchinson. Very Good/Very Good. 1967. Revised Second Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo Dust jacket unclipped in a clear protective sleeve. Brown cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. 184 pages clean and tight. This book, first published in 1955, -has been completely rewritten, with the exception of-the chapter on historical poetry and occasional short extracts from the original version Its main theme is the influence of Humanism on sixteenth-century English poetry. It discusses the tensions which developed between the attitudes of Italian Humanism and those of ,the Reformation, and indicates their effect on the poetry of the century. The changes in poetic form and technique which resulted from the crossing of humanist literary models with the native literary strain are considered; and the fusion of the humanist and the local is traced through a succession of poets-Skelton, \Vvatt, Surrey, S-c-'r y, Spenser, Donne-and in a variet' of litrrary kinds -pastoral, lyric, sonnet; heroic, satiric. Sixteenth-century poetic plat- cc is examined in the light of Renaissance literary theory, and the relationship between rhetoric and poetry illustrated. The final chapter seeks to define the quality of Elizabethan ;golden' poetry and the nature of the transition to the poetry of Donne and the satirists at the end of the century. The emphasis throughout is on the adaptability of Humanism, its capacity to absorb and give fresh expression to medieval poetic attitudes, and to offer -new literary genres where new needs arose. .