The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 3, The Renaissance

This volume is the first to explore as part of an unbroken continuum the critical legacy both of the humanist rediscovery of ancient learning and of its neoclassical reformulation. Focused on what is arguably the most complex phase in the transmission of the Western literary-critical heritage, the book encompasses those issues that helped shape the way European writers thought about literature from the late Middle Ages to the late seventeenth century. These issues touched almost every facet of Western intellectual endeavour, as well as the historical, cultural, social, scientific, and technological contexts in which that activity evolved. From the interpretative reassessment of the major ancient poetic texts, this volume addresses the emergence of the literary critic in Europe by exploring poetics, prose fiction, contexts of criticism, neoclassicism, and national developments. Sixty-one chapters by internationally respected scholars are supported by an introduction, detailed bibliographies for further investigation and a full index.

• The first comprehensive treatment of the history of literary criticism from c. 1490 to c. 1690 • Makes accessible for the first time the whole complex range of issues that helped define how literary works were described and put together during the early modern period • Contains a full list of primary texts and secondary sources as a guide for more specialised inquiry into the individual topics

Part I. Reading and Interpretation; Part II. Poetics; Part III. Theories of Prose Fiction; Part IV. Contexts of Criticism; Part V. Voices of Dissent; Part VI. Structures of Thought; Part VII. Neoclassical Issues - Beauty, Judgement, Persuasion, Polemics; Part VIII. Survey of National Developments.

\'… its huge and impressive range and scope make its arrival an occasion for great rejoicing … Norton\'s anthology makes a permanent contribution, not least because it alerts us to how criticism is now, not just to how it was then.\'

– Valentine Cunningham, The Times Higher Education Supplement