Reading the Renaissance
Ideas and Idioms from Shakespeare to Milton

edited by Marc Berley

$60.00 cloth / ISBN 0-8207-0336-2

Book Information

Reading the Renaissance is a timely and compelling answer to a decades-long attack on literature by various schools of critical theory. A collection of new and provocative essays by prominent scholars, it speaks Ð with learning, wit, and eloquence Ð to the enduring value of Renaissance literature and literary study. These scholars focus on the various Renaissance authors they consider, not contemporary theories or schools that might seem to offer totalizing safety. They are committed to the thrill of reading the Renaissance Ð not the power of rewriting it. This commitment, not coincidentally, leads them to authoritative new readings of major texts.

Author Information

Marc Berley is adjunct associate professor of English at Barnard College, Columbia University, and president of the Foundation for Academic Standards & Tradition. He is the author of After the Heavenly Tune: English Poetry and the Aspiration to Song (Duquesne University Press, 2000) and articles on Milton and Shakespeare.

Contributors:
Frank Kermode
Marc Berley
Michael Mack
Louis L. Martz
Albert C. Labriola
Anne Lake Prescott
Stanley Stewart
Ernest B. Gilman
Martin Elsky
Anthony Low
Edward W. Tayler

Reviews

"The wise, shrewd and learned essays in this impressively refreshing volume deploy a variety of historical and linguistic resources and by occasion — and with a radical energy — clear the tangled vines of much ill-humored and regressive academic palaver. It is hard to express the pleasure of reading this book."
— John Hollander, Yale University