Since publication in 1979 Isabel Rivers' sourcebook has established itself as the essential guide to English Renaissance poetry. It:
provides an account of the main classical and Christian ideas, outlining their meaning, their origins and their transmission to the Renaissance;
illustrates the ways in which Renaissance poetry drew on classical and Christian ideas;
contains extracts from key classical and Christian texts and relates these to the extracts of the English poems which draw on them;
includes suggestions for further reading, and an invaluable bibliographical appendix.
Preface to the First Edition Introduction: Renaissance Poetry and Modern Readers 1 The Golden Age and the Garden of Eden 2 The Pagan Gods 3 Platonism and Neoplatonism 4 Stoicism 5 Views of History 6 Cosmology 7 Reformation and Counter-Reformation 8 Protestant Theology 9 Humanism 10 Biblical Exegesis and Typology 11 Theories of Poetry 12 Allegory 13 Numerology
