Perspectives on Renaissance Poetry

Robert C. Evans is Professor of English at Auburn University Montgomery, USA. He is the author or editor of approximately twenty books (more than half on the 17th century) and has won a number of teaching awards.

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Sir Walter Ralegh (1552–1616): “What Is Our Life?”

1. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–42): “They fl ee from me”; “My lute, awake!”
2. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–47): “Love, that doth reign and live within my thought”; “Th’Assyrians’ king, in peace with foul desire”
3. Anne Vaughan Locke (1534?–after 1590): “And then not daring with presuming eye”; “Have mercy, God, for thy great mercy’s sake”
4. Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86): Astrophil and Stella 5 (“It is most true”); Astrophil and Stella 71 (“Who will in fairest book”)
5. Edmund Spenser (1552–99): Amoretti 68 (“Most glorious Lord of life”); Amoretti 75 (“One day I wrote her name”); The Faerie Queene , I.i-ii
6. Christopher Marlowe (1564–93): “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”; “Hero and Leander” (excerpt)
7. William Shakespeare (1564–1616): Sonnets 3 and 147; “Venus and Adonis” (excerpt)
8. John Donne (1572–1631): “The Flea”; “Holy Sonnet 14”
9. Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645): “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women” (excerpt); “The Description of Cookham” (excerpt)
10. Ben Jonson (1572–1637): “On My First Son”; “To Penshurst” (excerpt)
11. Lady Mary Wroth (1587–1651/3): “Like to the Indians”; Martha Moulsworth (1577–1646): “The Memorandum of Martha Moulsworth, Widow” (excerpt)
12. George Herbert (1593–1633): “Redemption”; “The Collar”
13. Robert Herrick (1591–1674): “Corinna’s Going A-Maying”; “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”
14. Katherine Philips (1632–64): “Upon the Double Murder of King Charles”; “Friendship’s Mystery”
15. Andrew Marvell (1621–78): “To His Coy Mistress”; “The Mower against Gardens”
16. John Milton (1608–74): “Lycidas” (excerpt); Paradise Lost, Book 12 (excerpt)

Afterword: Critical Pluralism: “A Contemplation on Bassets-down-Hill” by Anne Kemp
Appendix: The Kinds of Questions Different Critics Ask Christina M. Garner
Bibliography
Further Reading
Index of Theories and Applications