Description
Book SynopsisAs England entered the Renaissance and as humanism, with its focus on classical literature and philosophy, informed the educational system, English intellectuals engaged in a concerted effort to remake the culture, language, mannersindeed, the whole national stylethrough adapting the classics. But how could English literature, art, and culture, become classical, not only in imitating the ancients, but in the sense subsequently applied to music: classical as opposed to popular, as formal, serious, and therefore as good?For several decades in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Stephen Orgel writes, the return to the classics held out the promise of refinement and civility. Poetry was to be modeled on Greek and Roman examples rather than on the great English medieval works, which though admirable, lacked correctness. More than poetry was at stake, however, and the transition would not be easy. Classical rules seemed the wave of the future, rescuing England from what was seen a
Trade ReviewReading a book by Stephen Orgel is always an intellectual pleasure. His clear, intelligent, and acute writing leads the reader through the reconstruction of a past literary and cultural tradition, by showing how seemingly small events can have a remarkable meaning when compared with, or set in relation to, a larger panorama...In Wit’s Treasury Orgel exquisitely show[s] the complexity of creating a cultural identity and of becoming 'classics.' * SKENÈ Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies *
Stephen Orgel’s Wit’s Treasury advances a concise and compelling exploration of how early modern writers, artists, and printers employed ancient exempla to self-authorize early English work products...Orgel does much to make 'the classics' accessible by demonumentalizing them, by exposing their essential malleability, and by reiterating that 'nothing in the past is safely in the past, and the dark side of how productive classical models were was how dangerously pertinent—how alive—they could
also be.' Overall, Wit’s Treasury convincingly demonstrates that they still can be.
* Renaissance and Reformation *
Steven Orgel offers a unique, engaged exploration of classical influences on the written and visual arts in the early modern period...This study is brief, yet comprehensive, [and] offers well-chosen, detailed examples, and his book is a valuable contribution for scholars of early modern literature. * Choice *
There are many other books on aspects of sixteenth-century classicism in the arts, literature, education, and the sciences, but none with the combination of erudition, direct engagement with visual and textual material, brevity, and accessibility that Stephen Orgel brings to
Wit's Treasury. Orgel is a scholar of unique standing in his field. This is a book to be welcomed wherever Renaissance literature is taught and enjoyed. * Greg Walker, University of Edinburgh *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
A Note on Quotations
Chapter 1. Classicizing England
Chapter 2. The Uses of Prosody
Chapter 3. The Sound of Classical
Chapter 4. What Classical Looks Like
Chapter 5. From Black Letter to Roman
Chapter 6. Staging the Classical
Chapter 7. Looking Backward
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
Index
