Synopses & Reviews
Jack Lynch explores eighteenth-century British conceptions of the Renaissance, and the historical, intellectual, and cultural uses to which the past was put. He argues that scholars, editors, historians, religious thinkers, linguists, and literary critics defined themselves in relation to "the last age" or "the age of Elizabeth". This interdisciplinary study is of interest to cultural as well as literary historians of the eighteenth century.
Review
"Lynch has produced a set of excellent essays...[he] gives his own readers a number of compelling stories, solidly researched and richly rewarding to read." Martine Watson Brownley, Emory University, Albion
Review
"Recommended." Choice
Review
"Jack Lynch has undertaken an important task in explaining the eighteenth century's view of its immediate literary predecessors... Lynch lets the different versions of 18th century responses to the Renaissance play against each other in a postmodern way." The East-Central Intelligencer
Review
"[A] worthwhile volume." H-ALBION
Review
"well-designed book...a useful start for anyone interested in either period and English literary history in general. It has thirty-three pages of notes and a twenty-page bibliography that helpfully point readers to further resources, with a mixture of secondary sources, which are readily available, and primary texts, which attest to Lynch's original research." Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England Bernice W. Kliman
Synopsis
In The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson, Jack Lynch explores eighteenth-century British conceptions of the Renaissance.
Table of Contents
Preface; Note on the texts and citation; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 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; Notes; Bibliography; Index.