In John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, the pilgrims cannot reach the Celestial City without passing through Vanity Fair, where everything is bought and sold. In recent years there has been much analysis of commerce and consumption in Britain during the long eighteenth century, and of the dramatic expansion of popular publishing. Similarly, much has been written on the extraordinary effects of the evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century in Britain, Europe, and North Americ...

Since publication in 1979 Isabel Rivers' sourcebook has established itself as the essential guide to English Renaissance poetry. It:provides an account of the main classical and Christian ideas, outlining their meaning, their origins and their transmission to the Renaissance;illustrates the ways in which Renaissance poetry drew on classical and Christian ideas;contains extracts from key classical and Christian texts and relates these to the extracts of the...

Volume 25 of 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era investigates the local textures that make up the whole cloth of the Enlightenment. Ranging from China to Cheltenham and from Spinoza to civil insurrection, volume 25 celebrates the emergence of long-eighteenth-century culture from particularities and prodigies. Unfurling in the folds of this volume is a special feature on playwright, critic, and literary theorist John Dennis. Edited by Claude Willan, ...

** 5 Books in 1! ** This book comes complete with a Touch-or-Click Table of Contents, divided by each section. Enjoy a collection of Homilies written by Saint Thomas Aquinas! The collection is the most comprehensive collection available. Saint Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican priest of the Roman Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis. He was the foremos...

Four Dissertations is a collection of four essays by the Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume, first published in 1757. The four essays are:The Natural History of Religion Of the Passions Of Tragedy Of the Standard of Taste Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

It was an outlawed book, a text so dangerous "it could only be countered by the most vicious burnings, of books and men and women." But what book could incite such violence and bloodshed? The year is 1526. It is the age of Henry VIII and his tragic Anne Boleyn, of Martin Luther and Thomas More. The times are treacherous. The Catholic Church controls almost every aspect of English life, including access to the very Word of God. And the church will do anything to keep it that way.Ent...

In The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It describes the "image" discarded by later years as "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe." This, Lewis’s last book, has been hailed as "the final memorial to the work of a gr...

He that is to govern a whole nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but mankind. Leviathan is both a magnificent literary achievement and the greatest work of political philosophy in the English language. Permanently challenging, it has found new applications and new refutations in every generation. Hobbes argues that human beings are first and foremost concerned with their own individual desires and fears. He shows that a conflict of each against every man can onl...

Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466-1536) is one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement, which abandoned medieval pieties in favour of a rich new vision of the individual's potential. Praise of Folly, written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, is Erasmus's best-known work. Its dazzling mixture of fantasy and satire is narrated by a personification of Folly, dressed as a jester, who celebrates youth, pleasure, drunkenness and sexual desire, and goes on to lambast human pre...

This prize-winning account of the pre-Reformation church recreates lay people’s experience of religion, showing that late-medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but a strong and vigorous tradition. For this edition, Duffy has written a new introduction reflecting on recent developments in our understanding of the period.“A mighty and momentous book: a book to be read and re-read, pondered and revered; a subtle, profound book written with passion and eloquence, and w...

In The Elizabethan World Picture, Eustace M. Tillyard provides a fascinating glimpse into the intellectual and cultural framework that shaped Shakespeare's age. Tillyard masterfully explores how Elizabethans perceived the universe, the divine order, and humanity's place within an intricate cosmic hierarchy. Through discussions of astrology, theology, politics, and natural philosophy, he reveals a society rooted in a grand, cohesive vision of reality where every being, from king to...

In "Historia Calamitatum," Peter Abelard presents a poignant autobiographical narrative that intertwines personal turmoil with the intellectual fervor of the 12th century. This work is both a confession and a philosophical treatise, set against the backdrop of medieval scholasticism. Abelard employs a candid and reflective literary style, exploring themes of love, loss, and the search for knowledge, while critically examining the societal and ecclesiastical structures that shaped his life....