Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature

Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature
ISBN-10
0521481422
ISBN-13
9780521481427
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
308
Language
English
Published
1996-11-28
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Authors
R. S. White, Robert Sommerville White, White R. S.

Description

Natural Law, whether grounded in human reason or divine edict, encourages humankind to follow virtue and shun vice. The concept dominated Renaissance thought, where its literary equivalent, poetic justice, underpinned much of the period's creative writing. Robert White examines a wide range of Renaissance texts to show how writers as radically different as Milton and Hobbes formulated versions of Natural Law that served to maintain socially established hierarchies. This is the first book to apply a vast area of intellectual history to imaginative literature across a variety of genres during the Renaissance period.

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