Renaissance English poetry was closely involved with affairs of state: some poets held high office, others wrote to influence those in power and to sway an increasingly independent public opinion. In this revised edition of his groundbreaking study, David Norbrook offers a clear account of the issues that engaged the passions of such leading figures as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and John Milton, and provides introductions to a host of neglected writers.

• Introduction to the Revised Edition


• Preface


• 1: The 'Utopia' and Radical Humanism


• 2: The Reformation and Prophetic Poetry


• 3: 'The Shepheardes Calender': Prophecy and the Court


• 4: Sidney and Political Pastoral


• 5: 'The Faerie Queene' and Elizabethan Politics


• 6: Voluntary Servitude: Fulke Greville and the Arts of Power


• 7: Jonson and the Jacobean Peace, 1603-16


• 8: The Spenserians and King James, 1603-16


• 9: Crisis and Reaction, 1617-28


• 10: The Politics of Milton's Early Poetry


• Chronological Table


• Index