| | | | | | * * * * * | | | |***_Other numbers of this series will be issued from | |time to time, containing the results of literary research, | |or criticism by the students or officers of | |Columbia University, or others associated with them | |in study, under the authorization of the Department | |of Literature_, GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY _and_ | |BRANDER MATTHEWS, _Professors_. | |===============================================================| A HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE RENAISSANCE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY IN THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CLASSICISM BY JOEL ELIAS SPINGARN [Illustration] *New York* PUBLISHED FOR THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1899 _All rights reserved_ _COPYRIGHT_, 1899, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. *Norwood Press* J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. PREFACE THIS essay undertakes to treat the history of literary criticism in the Renaissance. The three sections into which the essay is divided are devoted, respectively, to Italian criticism from Dante to Tasso, to French criticism from Du Bellay to Boileau, and to English criticism from Ascham to Milton; but the critical activity of the sixteenth century has been the main theme, and the earlier or later literature has received treatment only in so far as it serves to explain the causes or consequences of the critical development of this central period. It was at this epoch that modern criticism began, and that the ancient ideals of art seemed once more to sway the minds of men; so that the history of sixteenth-century criticism must of necessity include a study of the beginnings of critical activity in modern Europe and of the gradual introduction of the Aristotelian canons into modern literature.