ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. To date his Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies. The revered professor in this huge tome offers a magisterial take on the literature and poetry (excluding drama) written during one of the most consequential periods in world history and the rise of English Literature. In his classic survey he provides deep insight into the greatest of the 16th century writers, including: Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, William Tyndale, John Knox, Dr Johnson, Richard Hooker, Hugh Latimer, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, Thomas Cramner and many more. It is a wise and distinctive collection in which Lewis expounds on the profound impact prose and poetry have had on both British intellectual life and his own critical writing and thinking. As readers we obtain an invigorating overview from the Norman Conquest through the mid 17th century and you feel reading this that he has read every book he is writing about. He makes a principle of telling us which authors he thinks we will enjoy as he invites us to a literary feast and a realm of discovery and enjoyment. He writes 'with astonishing freshness on subjects which might be thought to be exhausted.' - the New Statesman. He even includes 'bad books'. Spenser's Faerie Queene draws on masque, pageants, tapestry, carvings, tournaments and the whole panoply of the court. Shakespeare's sonnets are the heart of the Golden Age, and for Lewis they tell a story of a young man's passion both for another man and also for a fickle woman. 744 pages.