The rediscovery in the fifteenth century of Lucretius' De rerum natura was a challenge to received ideas. The poem offered a vision of the creation of the universe, the origins and goals of human life, and the formation of the state, all without reference to divine intervention. It has been hailed in Stephen Greenblatt's best-selling book, The Swerve, as the poem that invented modernity. But how modern did early modern readers want to become? This collection of essays offers a series of case studies which demonstrate the sophisticated ways in which some readers might relate the poem to received ideas, assimilating Lucretius to theories of natural law and even natural theology, while others were at once attracted to Lucretius' subversiveness and driven to dissociate themselves from him. The volume presents a wide geographical range, from Florence and Venice to France, England, and Germany, and extends chronologically from Lucretius' contemporary audience to the European Enlightenment. It covers both major authors such as Montaigne and neglected figures such as Italian neo-Latin poets, and is the first book in the field to pay close attention to Lucretius' impact on political thought, both in philosophy - from Machiavelli, through Hobbes, to Rousseau - and in the topical spin put on the De rerum natura by translators in revolutionary England. It combines careful attention to material contexts of book production and distribution with close readings of particular interpretations and translations, to present a rich and nuanced profile of the mark made by a remarkable poem.

For this edition David Norbrook has provided an extensive introduction which gives an overview of developments in methodology and research since the first edition in 1984, responds to some criticisms, and points the way to further inquiry. Footnotes have been updated to take account of the current state of knowledge, and a chronological table has been provided for ease of reference. Norbrook brings out the range and adventurousness of early modern poets' engagements with the public world The first part of the book establishes the more radical currents of thought shaping Renaissance poetry: civic humanism and apocalyptic Protestantism. Norbrook then shows how such leading Elizabethan poets as Sidney and Spenser, often seen as conservative monarchists, responded powerfully though sometimes ambivalently to more radical ideas. A chapter on Fulke Greville shows how that ambivalence reaches an extreme in some remarkable poetry.

This magisterial new history of seventeenth-century republican political culture sets key texts by Marvell and Milton in a richly detailed context, showing how writers reimagined English literary culture without kingship. The book draws on extensive archival research, bringing to light exciting and neglected manuscript and printed sources. Offering a bold new narrative of the whole period, and a timely reminder that England has a republican as well as a royalist heritage, it will be of compelling interest to historians as well as literary scholars.

This is the second volume in the four-volume edition of The Works of Lucy Hutchinson, the first-ever collected edition of the writings of the pioneering author and translator. This volume brings together for the first time the religious writings of Hutchinson (1620-81). She is well known for her classic narrative of the Civil War period, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, and for her Biblical poem Order and Disorder; these writings lay out the theological underpinnings of those works, making it possible to chart the development of her ideas in detail. They go beyond the practical piety often expected of women writers, translating Latin texts and exploring the nature of theological knowledge. Some works are published here for the first time, others have not been available since 1817. Detailed introductions and commentaries make these writings fully accessible to non-specialists and offer comparisons with contemporaries like John Owen and John Milton.

Renaissance English poetry was closely involved with affairs of state: some poets held high office, others wrote to influence those in power and to sway an increasingly independent public opinion. In this revised edition of his groundbreaking study, Norbrook offers a clear account of the issues that engaged the passions of such leading figures as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and John Milton, and provides introductions to a host of neglected writers.

The years from the accession of Henry VIII to the crisis of the English republic in 1659 were one of the most fertile epochs in world literature, and this anthology offers a generous selection of its poetry.

Arranged thematically, it is the first anthology fully to bring out the relationship between the period's poetry and politics, and to explore the growth of innovative humanist ideas and forms. It devotes generous space to women poets, is equally distinctive in its emphasis on popular literature and draws renewed attention to international influences on early modern British culture. With presentation kept as true as possible to the Renaissance originals, the texts have been freshly edited; while David Norbrook's Preface and Introduction illuminate some of the most controversial issues surrounding the Renaissance. A valuable range of appendices helps to make this a landmark text for the poetry and poetics of the period.