The Elizabethan World Picture

This book provides examples of the best modern scholarship on rhetoric in the renaissance. Lawrence Green, Lisa Jardine, Kees Meerhoff, Dilwyn Knox, Brian Vickers, George Hunter, Peter Mack, David Norbrook and Pat Rubin look at the reception of Aristotle's Rhetoric in the renaissance; the place of rhetoric in Erasmus's career, Melanchthon's teaching, and sixteenth century protestant schools; the rhetoric textbook; the use of rhetoric in Raphael, renaissance drama, Elizabethan romance, and seventeenth century political writing. It will become essential reading for advanced studies in English, rhetoric, art history, history, history of education, history of ideas, political theory, and reformation history.

This comprehensive and beautifully illustrated collection of essays conveys a vivid picture of a fascinating and hugely significant period in history. Featuring contributions from thirty-eight international scholars, the book takes a thematic approach to a period which saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the explorations of Francis Drake and Walter Ralegh, the establishment of the Protestant Church, the flourishing of commercial theatre and the works of Edmund Spencer, Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare. Encompassing social, political, cultural, religious and economic history, and crossing several disciplines, The Elizabethan World depicts a time of transformation, and a world order in transition. Topics covered include central and local government; political ideas; censorship and propaganda; parliament, the Protestant Church, the Catholic community; social hierarchies; women; the family and household; popular culture, commerce and consumption; urban and rural economies; theatre; art; architecture; intellectual developments ; exploration and imperialism; Ireland, and the Elizabethan wars. The volume conveys a vivid picture of how politics, religion, popular culture, the world of work and social practices fit together in an exciting world of change, and will be invaluable reading for all students and scholars of the Elizabethan period.

This illuminating account of ideas of world order prevalent in the Elizabethan Age and later is an indispensable companion for readers of the great writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists, Donne and Milton, among many others. The basic medieval idea of an ordered Chain of Being is studied by Tillyard in the process of its various transformations by the dynamic spirit of the Renaissance. Among his topics are: Angels; the Stars and Fortune; the Analogy between Macrocosm and Microcosm; the Four Elements; the Four Humors; Sympathies; Correspondences; and the Cosmic Dance--ideas and symbols that inspirited the imaginations not only of the Elizabethans, but also of the Renaissance as such. This idea of cosmic order was one of the genuine ruling ideas of the Elizabethan Age, and perhaps the most characteristic. Such ideas, like our everyday manners, are the least disputed and the least paraded in the creative literature of the time. The province of this book is some of the notions about the world and man that were quite frequently taken for granted by the ordinary educated Elizabethan; the commonplaces too familiar for the poets to make detailed use of, except in explicitly educational passages, but essential as basic assumptions and invaluable at moments of high passion. The objective of The Elizabethan World Picture is to extract and explain the most ordinary beliefs about the constitution of the world as pictured in the Elizabethan Age and through this exposition to help the ordinary reader to understand and to enjoy the great writers of the age. In attempting this, Tillyard has brought together a number of pieces of elementary lore. This classic text is a convenient factual aid to extant interpretations of some of Spenser, Donne, or Milton.

A collection of some of the best, wittiest and most unusual excerpts from 16th- and 17th-century writing. "Shakespeare's England" brings to life the variety, the energy and the harsh reality of England at this time. Providing a portrait of the age, it includes extracts from a wide variety of writers, taken from books, plays, poems, letters, diaries and pamphlets by and about Shakespeare's contemporaries. These include William Harrison and Fynes Moryson (providing descriptions of England), Nicholas Breton (on country life), Isabella Whitney and Thomas Dekker (on London life), Nashe (on struggling writers), Stubbes (with a Puritan view of Elizabethan enjoyments), Harsnet and Burton (on witches and spirits), John Donne (meditations on prayer and death), King James I (on tobacco) and Shakespeare himself.

From Hamlet to Romeo and Juliet to A Midsummer Night′s Dream, Shakespeare′s celebrated works have touched people around the world. Aliki combines literature, history, biography, archaeology, and architecture in this richly detailed and meticulously researched introduction to Shakespeare′s world-his life in Elizabethan times, the theater world, and the Globe, for which he wrote his plays. Then she brings history full circle to the present-day reconstruction of the Globe theater. Ages 8+

Now that Britain has left the EU it's a good time to ask ourselves where we should be going from here. Albion Awakening is the fruit of several years' speculation on the spiritual future of the British Isles. It includes articles on the history, mythology and current state of the country together with fictional meditations and suggestions of a new path we could take that would bring us closer to our destined goal. The book can be regarded as a 'crash course' in those people and events that make Albion - the phenomena that raise mere Britain to the mythic significance of Albion. It is intended to encourage all lovers of Albion in sustaining and growing the reality of our national myth. Albion still sleeps but the potential is there for awakening, even in our troubled times, if enough people can throw off their spiritual sloth and rediscover the light that shines deep in the heart of the country.

This book offers an experiential perspective on the lives of Elizabethans—how they worked, ate, and played—with hands-on examples that include authentic music, recipes, and games of the period. Daily Life in Elizabethan England: Second Edition offers a fresh look at Elizabethan life from the perspective of the people who actually lived it. With an abundance of updates based on the most current research, this second edition provides an engaging—and sometimes surprising—picture of what it was like to live during this distant time. Readers will learn, for example, that Elizabethans were diligent recyclers, composting kitchen waste and collecting old rags for papermaking. They will discover that Elizabethans averaged less than 2 inches shorter than their modern British counterparts, and, in a surprising echo of our own age, that many Elizabethan city dwellers relied on carryout meals—albeit because they lacked kitchen facilities. What further sets the book apart is its "hands-on" approach to the past with the inclusion of actual music, games, recipes, and clothing patterns based on primary sources.