Includes bibliographical references (pages 198-218) and index
1 - Struggling to emerge from barbarity: historiography and the idea of the classic -- - 2 - Learning's triumph: historicism and the spirit of the age -- - 3 - Call Britannia's glories back to view: Tudor history and Hanoverian historians -- - 4 - The rage of Reformation: religious controversy and political stability -- - 5 - The ground-work of stile: language and national identity -- - 6 - Studied barbarity: Jonson, Spenser, and the idea of progress -- - 7 - The last age: Renaissance lost
"In The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson, Jack Lynch explores eighteenth-century British conceptions of the Renaissance, and the historical, intellectual, and cultural uses to which the past was put. Scholars, editors, historians, religious thinkers, linguists, and literary critics of the period all defined themselves in relation to "the last age" or "the age of Elizabeth." Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers reworked older historical schemes to suit their own needs, turning to the age of Petrarch and Poliziano, Erasmus and Scaliger, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Queen Elizabeth to define their culture in contrast to the preceding age
They derived a powerful sense of modernity from the comparison, which proved essential to the constitution of a national character. This interdisciplinary study will be of interest to cultural as well as literary historians of the eighteenth century."--BOOK JACKET.
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K. [u.a.]
;
EBSCO Industries, Inc., Birmingham, AL, USA
"In The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson, Jack Lynch explores eighteenth-century British conceptions of the Renaissance, and the historical, intellectual, and cultural uses to which the past was put. Scholars, editors, historians, religious...
more
"In The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson, Jack Lynch explores eighteenth-century British conceptions of the Renaissance, and the historical, intellectual, and cultural uses to which the past was put. Scholars, editors, historians, religious thinkers, linguists, and literary critics of the period all defined themselves in relation to "the last age" or "the age of Elizabeth." Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers reworked older historical schemes to suit their own needs, turning to the age of Petrarch and Poliziano, Erasmus and Scaliger, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Queen Elizabeth to define their culture in contrast to the preceding age. They derived a powerful sense of modernity from the comparison, which proved essential to the constitution of a national character. This interdisciplinary study will be of interest to cultural as well as literary historians of the eighteenth century."--Jacket.
