#22 Defending literature

Here's the title of this New Historicist review of Renaissance Literature:

Defending Literature in Early Modern England: Renaissance Literary Theory in Social Context


Doesn't that sound like a must read?  You have a real winning title there Robert Matz.

This academic book came from my collection of Cambridge books.  The author at times was far wordier and confusing than necessary.  It required my undivided attention when reading it, and his points were at time very illuminating, as new historicists tend to be.  But at other times, which I can't be bothered to recall at this moment, when Matz stretched a passage to mean something that seemed less than convincing.  I basically read this book because a chapter was dedicated to The Fairie Queene, which was not my favorite, the one on Sydney was the best.

The main thesis of this work was how the emerging poet was using literature a means to create profit and pleasure for the reader and to help define what a humanist noble should be .