The English Renaissance: Identity and Representation in Elizabethan England

Introduction.

1. The Reception of Italian Literary Culture: Motives and Dynamics.

2. Wyatt, Surrey, and the Onset of English Petrarchism.

3. Elizabethan Petrarchism and the Protestant Location of Self.

4. Ethic and Politic Considerations: Spenser, Sidney, and the Uses of Italianate Pastoral.

5. Epic and the Formation of National Identity: Ariosto, Tasso, and The Faerie Queene.

6. Appraising 'The Seeming Truths' of the Times: the Italianate Plays of Shakespeare.

Conclusion.

Bibliography.

Index.