Platonism and the English Imagination [Paperback]

The first comprehensive overview of the influence of Platonism on English literature.This is the first comprehensive overview of the influence of Platonism on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, Pound and Iris Murdoch, used Platonic themes and images within their own imaginative work.This is the first comprehensive overview of the influence of Platonism on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, Pound and Iris Murdoch, used Platonic themes and images within their own imaginative work.This is the first compendious study of the influence of Plato on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers used Platonic ideas and images within their own imaginative work. Established experts and new writers have worked together to produce individual essays on more than thirty English authors, including Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot, Auden and Iris Murdoch; and the book is divided chronologically, showing how every age has reconstructed Platonism to suit its own understanding of the world.Preface; Part I. Antiquity: 1. Plato and the neoplatonists Anne Shepard; Part II. The Early Christian Period and the Middle Ages: 2. Introduction Anna Baldwin; 3. The Christian Platonism of St. Augustine Janet Coleman; 4. Boethius and King Alfred Janet Bately; 5. Chaucer's use of neoplatonic traditions Yasunari Takada; 6. Platonism in the middle english mystics Andrew Louth; Part III. The Renaissance and the Seventeenth Century: 7. Introduction Sarah Hutton; 8. The transformation of Platonic love in the Italian Renaissance Jill Kraye; 9. Uses of Plato by Erasmus and more Dominic Baker-Smith; 10. Italian neoplatonism and the poetry of Sidney, Spenser, Chapman and Donne John Doe; 11. Shakespeare on beauty, truth and transcendence Stephen Medcalfe; 12. Platonism in Spenser's mutability cantlz