Perspectives on Renaissance Poetry

Robert C. Evans is Professor of English at Auburn University Montgomery, USA. He is the author or editor of approximately twenty books (more than half on the 17th century) and has won a number of teaching awards.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Sir Walter Ralegh (1552–1616): “What Is Our Life?”1. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–42): “They fl ee from me”; “My lute, awake!”2. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–47): “Love, that doth reign and live within my thought”; “Th’Assyrians’ king, in peace with foul desire” 3. Anne Vaughan Locke (1534?–after 1590): “And then not daring with presuming eye”; “Have mercy, God, for thy great mercy’s sake”4. Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86): Astrophil and Stella 5 (“It is most true”); Astrophil and Stella 71 (“Who will in fairest book”)5. Edmund Spenser (1552–99): Amoretti 68 (“Most glorious Lord of life”); Amoretti 75 (“One day I wrote her name”); The Faerie Queene , I.i-ii6. Christopher Marlowe (1564–93): “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”; “Hero and Leander” (excerpt) 7. William Shakespeare (1564–1616): Sonnets 3 and 147; “Venus and Adonis” (excerpt)8. John Donne (1572–1631): “The Flea”; “Holy Sonnet 14” 9. Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645): “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women” (excerpt); “The Description of Cookham” (excerpt) 10. Ben Jonson (1572–1637): “On My First Son”; “To Penshurst” (excerpt)11. Lady Mary Wroth (1587–1651/3): “Like to the Indians”; Martha Moulsworth (1577–1646): “The Memorandum of Martha Moulsworth, Widow” (excerpt)12. George Herbert (1593–1633): “Redemption”; “The Collar”13. Robert Herrick (1591–1674): “Corinna’s Going A-Maying”; “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”14. Katherine Philips (1632–64): “Upon the Double Murder of King Charles”; “Friendship’s Mystery”15. Andrew Marvell (1621–78): “To His Coy Mistress”; “The Mower against Gardens”16. John Milton (1608–74): “Lycidas” (excerpt); Paradise Lost, Book 12 (excerpt) Afterword: Critical Pluralism: “A Contemplation on Bassets-down-Hill” by Anne KempAppendix: The Kinds of Questions Different Critics Ask Christina M. GarnerBibliographyFurther ReadingIndex of Theories and Applications

This primer in applied critical theory bridges the gap between early modern English poetry and various analytical approaches to literature. It is more focused than other introductory guides to criticism, such as Wilfred Guerin’s Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (1966; 2nd., 1979) and Charles Bressler’s Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Evans (English and philosophy, Auburn Univ., Montgomery) offers paragraph-length summaries of 20 critical methodologies and demonstrates, in chapter-length discussions, how they elucidate some 30 Renaissance poems by writers from Wyatt to Milton (included are several poems by Emilia Lanier, Anne Vaughn Lock, and Lady Mary Wroth). Evans’s style is direct and accessible but never simplistic. Not every method is applied to every text (one misses a psychoanalytic reading of Donne’s ‘Flea’ and ‘Holy Sonnet 14’), but Evans succeeds in showing how early modern texts might respond to a variety of reading approaches. Specialists may find the book’s design somewhat schematic, but the intended audience (less experienced readers) will welcome Evans's concise yet careful distinctions among a variety of potentially challenging, theoretical strategies. Supplementary materials by Anne Kemp and Christina Garner offer useful additional examples of explication and a taxonomy of critical methods. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; general readers.