Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament.

THOMAS HEALY's New Latitudes, offering a lively and informative introduction to a variety of theoretical approaches to English Renaissance texts and culture, is clearly aimed at the first year undergraduate market. In emphasizing the current pluralism in critical formulations of textual significance, he leads the uninitiated reader comfortably into an awareness of the advantages to be gained by seeking to delineate the fullest range of cultural and aesthetic significances of a text to both its own contemporary readers and modern critics. In short, he seeks to offer in this compact and reasonably priced study an introductory guide to a broad selection of some of the most high profile critical approaches to Renaissance literary texts that have become available to students during the last fifteen years or …