The Love Aesthetics of Maurice Scève

• Preface; 1. The problem of the dark side of a love poet: an introduction and reassessment; 2. In search of love's epistemology: affirming the role of the creative imagination; 3. Embodying the sacred and ineffable: poetic forms of transcendence and paradise; 4. Becoming what one sees: the unity and identity of poetic self; 5. Struggle, light, and love's 'sainct lieu'; 6. 'De mes trauaulx me bienheurantz ma peine': love poetry as therapy; Epilogue: Scève, Mallarmé, and the art of transcendence; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

"In this thought-provoking and refreshing study, Nash has accomplished on the critical level what he portrays Scève as having attained in the poetic and aesthetic realm. It is a work which will be valuable, not only to specialists of Scève and Renaissance poetry, but to all who are interested in investigating that mysterious and complicated intellectual, sensual, and aesthetic process which results in the creation of poetry." Renaissance Quarterly