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What to read, 1401-1600

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16th Century

Pedro CALDERON de la Barca (1600-1681) The Online Books Page Theatre History
he can be said to lack something of the wilder lyrical fantasy that we enjoy in Lope. He is more serious, didactic, even more doctrinal ... . This disadvantage in a secular drama becomes a positive asset in the autos sacramentales... --Philip Ward

The Doctor of His Own Honor (El medico de su honra 1635)

Life is a Dream (La Vida es Sueno 1636)

The Mighty Magician (El Magico prodigioso 1637)

The Mayor of Zalamea (El Alcalde de Zalamea 1640)

TANG Xianzu (1550-1616) China Culture

The Peony Pavilion (1598) Project Gutenberg Lincoln Center
famous love story. --A Guide to Oriental Classics (3rd Ed. 1989) p. 238

(Cyril Birch translation 1980)

Rene DESCARTES (1596-1650) The Online Books Page post

Rules for the Direction of the Understanding (1628)

Geometry (1637)

Discourse on the Method (1637)
He did not cry 'Fire!' nor did he make it a duty for everyone to doubt; for Descartes was a quiet and solitary thinker, not a bellowing night-watchman; he modestly admitted that his method had importance for him alone and was justified in part by the bungled knowledge of his earlier years. --S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (1843) Preface, translated by Walter Lowrie (1945) p. 4
With Descartes' new stress on self-consciousness as the only immediately certain knowledge, the question of how we know external reality became a knotty and disturbing question for philosophical thought. --Seymour Cain, Philosophy (1963), p. 151
Descartes's method was not philosophical but rhetorical. He was a sophist and, perhaps, the most clever one of all. --James Mesa, Crisis, February 2001, p. 52
he saw the universe as a gigantic machine in which everything is measurable; that which cannot be translated into mathematical terms is therefore unreal. According to this premise, the entire universe can be explained by mechanical and mathematical laws. --Robert B. Downs

Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)
instead of direct confrontation, he chooses to allow the process of doubt to run its course until it arrives at an (allegedly) indubitable truth: 'I think therefore I am.' --Raphael and McLeish

Objections to the Meditations and Replies (1641, 1642)

Principles of Philosophy (1644)

Letter to the Marquis of Newcastle (November 23, 1646)

Letter to Henry Moore (1649)

Passions of the Soul (1650)
also

Parenthetic Doubt (Andrew Besley translation 1991) Philosophy Now (Winter 1991)

Thomas CAREW (1595-1639) Luminarium

Poems (1640)

George HERBERT (1593-1633) The Online Books Page | Luminarium Wikipedia entry

The Temple (1633)
Whatever was best in the English temperament and in the Church of England between the times of Elizabeth I and Cromwell is present in these strong and lovable poems. --Raphael and McLeish

Izaak WALTON (1593-1685) The Online Books Page Petri Liukkonen biography

The Compleat Angler (1653) Kenneth Rexroth essay
A catch for any lucky reader. --Raphael and McLeish

Johann Amos COMENIUS (1592-1670) The Online Books Page

The Labyrinth of the World (c. 1622)

Robert HERRICK (1591-1664) The Online Books Page | Luminarium Wikipedia entry

Hesperides (1648, includes His Noble Numbers, 1647)
celebrates the fragility of life and love, and with the lightest of touches. His poems are noted for their rhythmic beauty and their skillfully-worked grace. --Raphael and McLeish

Thomas HOBBES (1588-1679) The Online Books Page post

Answer to Sir William D'Avenant's Preface before 'Gondibert' (1650)

Elements of Law (1650)

Elements of Philosophy (1651)

Leviathan (1651)
Hobbes does not glorify absolute power. He sees it as a matter of necessity for individual self-preservation. --Peter Wolff, The Development of Political Theory and Government (1959), pp. 99-100
private persons are bound to obey the supreme civil power in all public matters, and that power is derived directly from God. --Seymour Cain, Religion and Theology (1961), p. 126
Hobbes denies what Aquinas had affirmed, that as social creatures we have a natural inclination toward the good of others. --J. Daryl Charles, 'Protestants and Natural Law', First Things, December 2006, p. 35
We owe to Rousseau the insight that if there were no nation-states there would be no wars, and to Hobbes the insight that without nation-states there would be no domestic order. --Robert Delahunty and John Yoo, 'Lines in the Sand', The National Interest, Jan./Feb. 2007 p. 24
Possessing absolute power and incorporating in a single 'Will' the wills of all men, the sovereign is charged with preserving order and protecting life and property. Hobbes' assertion is that peace, the common goal of all men, can never be had unless this supreme power is firmly established and dutifully obeyed. --Robert B. Downs

(Noel Malcolm, editor, 2012) The Economist review

John FORD (1586-c. 1640) The Online Books Page

'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1663)

Cardinal RICHELIEU (Armand-Jean de Plessis, 1585-1642) Hanover
In the impassioned belief that France was the surrogate for Christendom, Richelieu created the nationalist model, and the Peace of Westphalia imposed it on Europe—which suggests that it was not the Reformation but rather the Francophile mysticism of Richelieu and Joseph du Tremblay that delivered the death blow to Christian universal empire. --David Shushon, Zionism for Christians, First Things, June/July 2008

Political Testament (1687)

John SELDEN (1584-1654) The Online Books Page

Table Talk (1689)

Francis BEAUMONT (1584-1616) The Online Books Page
and John FLETCHER (1579-1635) The Online Books Page

Plays (1647; 1679)

Philip MASSINGER (1583-1640) The Online Books Page

A New Way to Pay Old Debts (c. 1625)

Hugo GROTIUS (1583-1645) The Online Books Page

On the Law of War and Peace (1625)

TIRSO de Molina (Gabriel Tellez, 1583-1648) Association for Hispanic Classical Theater

The Trickster of Seville (El burlador de Sevilla y convidadode piedra 1630)
written against the unprincipled young noblemen of his day, in which a young seducer (also guilty of trachery, murder, defilement of the sacrament of marriage, lese-mageste, and violation of the laws of hospitality) is drawn down to Hell by a 'stone guest', the taunted statue of the father of one of Juan's victims. --Philip Ward

Lord HERBERT of Cherbury (1581-1648) Poem Hunter

Autobiography (1764)

John WEBSTER (c. 1580-c. 1634) The Online Books Page Wikipedia entry

The White Devil (1612)
Violent and macabre; all-pervasive evil and darkness relieved by passages of fiercely brilliant poetry. --Raphael and McLeish

The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1618)
a duke goes mad and believes himself transformed into a ravenous wolf. --Michael Dirda

Francisco Gomez de QUEVEDO y Villegas (1580-1645) Poetry Searcher | Anthology of Spanish Poetry

"Satirical Letter of Censure" (Sermon estoico de censura moral 1625)

Historia de la Vida del Buscon (1626)

Visions (Suenos 1627)

Thomas MIDDLETON (1580-1627) The Online Books Page
and William ROWLEY (1585-1642) The Online Books Page

The Changeling (1622)

Luis VELEZ de Guevara (1579-1644) Project Gutenberg

El diablo cojuelo (1641)

William HARVEY (1578-1657) The Online Books Page

On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus 1628)
Harvey's discovery compelled an entirely new orientation in medicine and set a magnificent example of the correct method to be adopted in attempting further advances. More than anyone else, Harvey introduced the scientific spirit into medicine, and his influence was widely felt. --Sir Zachary Cope
The momentous discovery, in short, was that the same blood is carried out by arteries and returned by veins, performing a complete circulation. --Robert B. Downs

Disquisition to John Riolan (Exercitatio anatomica de circulations sanguinis 1649)

On the Generation of Animals (Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium 1651)

Robert BURTON (1577-1640) The Online Books Page

Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

Samuel PURCHAS (1577-1626) Kraus Collection | Kraus Collection, 4 vol.

Purchas, His Pilgrimes (1625)

John MARSTON (1575-1654) The Online Books Page Literary Encyclopedia

The Malcontent (1603-04)

Cyril TOURNEUR (1575-1626) The Online Books Page | Poetry Archive

The Revenger's Tragedy (1607)

John DONNE (1572-1631) The Online Books Page Carol Iannone essay | Jeremy Bernstein essay | Izaak Walton biography | Thomas Carew elegy
Pure distillation of early-17th-century intelligence--troubled, multiple, leaping and swooping, raising self-love to the height of compassion. --Raphael and McLeish

Holy Sonnets (1607-1631)

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning (1611)

First and Second Anniversary (1611, 1612)

Songs and Sonnets (to 1615)

Elegies (to 1615)
We are seldom reminded as forcefully as by these poems that in the Latin poetry which underlies them the idea of rhetorical figuration is itself imaged as the application of cosmetics. --Paul Dean, The New Criterion, March 2001, p. 66

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Sermons (1625, 1626)

The Canonization (1633)

Lecture upon the Shadow (1635)

Thomas DEKKER (1572-1632) The Online Books Page

The Shoemaker's Holiday (1600)

Benjamin JONSON (1572-1637) The Online Books Page

Volpone, or The Fox (1606)

The Alchemist (1610)

Masques (1614-1634) Wikipedia

Come, My Celia (The Forest 1616)

Epicene (1609)

On My First Son (The Works of Benjamin Jonson 1616)

Epitaph on Elizabeth (The Works of Benjamin Jonson 1616)

To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare (1623)

Discoveries, or Timber; a commonplace book (1641)

Johannes KEPLER (1571-1630) History of Mathematics Archive | Institute and Museum of the History of Science post
After tremendous search, the conjecture that the orbit [of a planet] was an ellipse with the sun at one of its foci was found to fit the facts. Kepler also discovered the law governing the variation in speed during one revolution, which was that the line sun-planet sweeps out equal areas in equal periods of time. Finally he also discovered that the squares of the periods of revolution round the sun vary as the cubes of the major axes of the ellipses. --Albert Einstein

The New Astronomy (1609)

Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (1618-21)
Whereas astronomers for hundreds of years had seen nothing but circles in the heavens, Kepler could see that the planets moved in ellipses. --Peter Wolff, Foundations of Science and Mathematics (1960), p. 106

Harmony of the World (1619)

Tommaso CAMPANELLA (1568-1634) The Online Books Page

The City of the Sun (1602)

Sonnets (2010)

Thomas NASHE (1567-1601) Luminarium

The Unfortunate Traveller (1594)

Thomas CAMPION (1567-1620) The Online Books Page

A Booke of Ayres (1601)

Two Bookes of Ayres (c. 1613)
The best Elizabethan words are given a seductive, syncopated overtone by the best Elizabethan music. --Raphael and McLeish

The Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres (1617)

GALILEO Galilei (1564-1642) The Online Books Page | Great Books and Classics The Galileoscope Alec MacAndrew on Geocentrism | Paul Newell on the trial post

The Starry Messenger (1989 Albert Van Helden translation, Siderius Nuncius, 1610)

The Authority of Scripture (1614)

Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World, the Ptolemaic and the Copernican (1632)
In the beginning of the discussion the old concept of a perfect an unchangeable heaven is challenged on the basis of evidence furnished by new stars and sunspots, and similarities are pointed out between the earth, moon, and planets. There follow propositions relating to the earth's rotation and to the revolution of the earth about the sun. In each argument the Copernican doctrine emerges triumphant as constituting the simplest and most logical explanation of astronomical phenomena. --Robert B. Downs

Dialogue Concerning the Two New Sciences (1638)
It is cast in the form of a dialogue between three men who, though well educated, are not themselves scientists. The pace of the work is leisurely, and very little of it is highly technical. It is puncutated with examples drawn from everyday life, and the wishes of the company for additional discussion are almost always heeded. --Peter Wolff, Foundations of Science and Mathematics (1960), p. 118

Christopher MARLOWE (1564-1593) The Online Books Page Wikipedia entry post
our great master of the material imagination; he writes best about flesh, gold, gems, stone, fire, clothes, water, snow, and air. --C. S. Lewis

Tamburlaine (part 1, c.1587; part 2, c.1587–1588)
This vast two-part historical extravaganza established blank verse--what Ben Jonson called 'Marlowe's mighty line'--as a medium for drama, and related its hero's whirlwind career with subtlety and feeling. --Michael Dirda

The Jew of Malta (c.1589)
might well be regarded as Marlowe's meditation on espionage, since Barabas practices all the skills of the spy and the double agent. --Michael Dirda

Edward II (c.1592)
Some have held that Edward II--about that king's passion for his minion Gaveston--is a better-made play than Dr. Faustus; certainly its scene of Edward's murder, hinting of violation with a red-hot poker, makes for horrifying and powerful theater. --Michael Dirda

Doctor Faustus (1604)
the story of the scholar who sells his soul to the devil and then doesn't quite know what to do with the power and knowldege he acquires. --Michael Dirda

Complete Poems (2003)

William SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) The Online Books Page Wikipedia entry post George Santayana essay | Samuel Johnson preface | see Samuel Taylor Coleridge | see Benjamin Jonson
He lived in the period just before the era of economic liberalism--with the market as its master model of society--split off 'liberty' and 'individuality' from community and finally from the social self. His direct and publicly cognizable transformations of the irrational into art were therefore still possible. --Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (1966) p. 205
we see how Shakespeare remains *politically* relevant to a wide variety of situations around the world; he seems to be taken most seriously by people who find themselves in the middle of a crisis and, in particular, who feel their liberties threatened. --Paul A. Cantor, Playwright of the Globe, Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2006/07, p. 37
It is, of course, the protean nature of Shakespeare's personality, as manifested in his plays, which has lead critics and writers to conscript him for various positions, from crypto-Catholic to conservative to agnostic humanist to nihilist. --Anthony O'Hear
Dates of plays are of first performance rather than first publication. --ed.

King Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III (1590)

Romeo and Juliet (1591-1596)

King Richard III (1592)

The Taming of the Shrew (1593)

Titus Andronicus (1593)

Love's Labour's Lost (1594)

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594) Adam Bertocci parody

The Winter's Tale (1594-1610)

King Richard II (1595)

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

The Merchant of Venice (1596)
This is a 'controversial' play--so much so that some people contend it should never be read or presented on the stage, while others consider it perfectly harmless and ascribe the former view to the anxieties of our age. --Peter Wolff, Philosophy of Law and Jurisprudence (1961), p. 123

King John (1596)

King Henry IV, Parts I and II (1597, 1598)
great treatises on politics, maturity and responsibility. --Sidney Verba

The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597-1600)

As You Like It (1599)

Julius Caesar (1599)
Fearful that Caesar will become Emperor of Rome, fellow senators Cassius and Brutus conspire against him. Caesar ignores warnings to lie low, heads to the Senate and is brutally stabbed. Caesar's right-hand man, Mark Antony, rallies the public against the conspirators, who flee Rome--with Antony's army hot on their heels. --Netflix
they are inspired first to hate Caesar by Brutus’ speech and then to love him by Antony’s, in the space of minutes. This scene is terrifying because it reveals that even though Caesar has just been assassinated to preserve the Republic, the Republic is already dead. Its people are unfit for it. --Eve Fairbanks, Magic Words, review of 'Framing the Debate' by Jeffrey Feldman, The New York Times Book Review, April 8, 2007, p. 24

King Henry V (1599) Shulevitz
Shakespeare's dramatization of Henry's supreme leadership and martial valor (particularly in the battlefield speeches) can hardly fail to stir even the most churlish and disapproving, which is perhaps why the play is often treated in our less patriotic times with caution or even suspicion. --Anthony O'Hear

Much Ado about Nothing (1599)

The Passionate Pilgrim (1599)
an unauthorized anthology of poems by various authors... and attributed on the title page to William Shakespeare. --Philip Ward

Hamlet (1599-1600) Zaleski | Greenblatt
For the puzzle of the play is the character of Hamlet. Almost anything that we might be tempted to say concerning him can as easily be denied as affirmed. --Peter Wolff, A General Introduction to the Great Books and to a Liberal Education (1959), p. 118
Some of what Hamlet does presupposes the sacred order assumed by medieval and even Reformation Christianity, and the action of the play makes little sense outside that context, and to that extent the play is unmodern; but there are within Hamlet's personality and character feelings and thoughts which put the old order in question, and it is these aspects of 'Hamlet' which have fascinated readers and commentators ever since, particularly since the Romantic era. --Anthony O'Hear
His mother wed his / dead murdered father's brother! / Next Jerry Springer. --David M. Bader, 'Haiku U.'

Troilus and Cressida (1602)

Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (1602)

Othello (1603)
Othello is one of the most accessible of his greatest plays: poetry, form and spectacle are kept in perfect balance. --Raphael and McLeish
He is lead to this tragic end by the machinations of Iago, perhaps to most masterful of Shakespeare's creations of human villainy. But his downfall is also caused by his own passion, impetuousity, and pride. --Seymour Cain, The Great Ideas Program, Volume 6, Imaginative Literature I: From Homer to Shakespeare (1961), p. 203

All's Well That Ends Well (1603)

Measure for Measure (1603)

King Lear (1603-1606)
The power of speech to evoke man's most subtle and contradictory insights, the interplay of good and evil in the world, the terror of the irrational and the unknown and the healing power of hope and love are all woven into a single dream. --Zeph Stewart

Macbeth (1603-1606) Jaffa | Strini | Spice | Powell | Walters | Jaques | Spice
It derives much of its impact from its deep insights into human character and motivations, akin to the interpretations of modern depth psychology, and also from the sense it conveys of the tremendous change that follows from the commitment of an single act, the catastrophic weight of the present moment. --Seymour Cain, Imaginative Literature I: From Homer to Shakespeare (1961), p. 222
It is an introduction to the richness of genius, and the richness of something at the disposal of persons who are not geniuses--the English language. --George F. Will
secretly, I confess, I rooted for MacBeth, and hated to have him die, even if I did see the justice of it. --John Simon, Learning to Read, The New Criterion, January 2007, p. 41

Antony and Cleopatra (1606)

Coriolanus (1607) Sandall

Timon of Athens (1607)

Pericles (1608)

Cymbeline (1609) Motlani | Jaques

The Sonnets (1609)
the homosexual Sonnets (rearranged and altered in the edition entitled Poems of 1646 to imply they were addressed to a woman) are the best-known of Shakespeare's lyrics. --Philip Ward

The Tempest (1611)
Shakespeare, however had clearly read Montaigne and disagreed with him. Some critics think that The Tempest was a challenge to On the Cannibals. --Merrie Cave, The Salisbury Review, Summer 2001, p. 47
Following Coleridge, it is now more often seen as a "romance," along with other late plays ('The Winter's Tale', 'Pericles', 'Cymeline'), in which we also find scenes of the reconciliation of age-old disputes, with the disputants fortuitously brought together and lost children found. --Anthony O'Hear

King Henry VIII (1612)

Michael DRAYTON (1563-1631) The Online Books Page

The Battle of Agincourt (Odes 1619)

To the Virginian Voyage (Odes 1619)

Samuel DANIEL (1562-1619) The Online Books Page

A Defence of Ryme (1603)

Poems (in Selected Poetry and A Defence of Rhyme 1998)

Felix Arturo LOPE DE VEGA y Carpio (1562-1635) Golden Age Spanish Sonnets
The phrase 'Es de Lope' ('it is by Lope') is still used to commend a prodigy of perfection ... Lope de Vega is considered the Spanish Shakespeare. --Philip Ward

Peribanez and the Comendador of Ocana (Peribanez y El Comendador de Ocana, 1610?)

All Citizens Are Soldiers (Fuentovejuna, 1612-1614)

The Dog in the Manger (El Perro del Hortelano 1613-1615)

The Knight of Olmedo (El Caballero de Olmedo, (1620-1625?)

Lost in a Mirror (El Castigo sin Venganza, 1631)

La Dorotea (1632)

Francis BACON, 1st Baron Verulam (1561-1626) The Online Books Page post
[T]he propaganda for new ideas about nature, of which Bacon was the undoubted master, has come to be seen as vitally important for their triumph. --Theodore K. Rabb, New York Times Book Review, August 15, 1999, p. 13
defined the scientific method in its classic form: the use of inductive reasoning to draw conclusions from an exhaustive body of facts. --Steven L. Goodman

Letter to Lord Burghley (1592)

Essays; Or, Counsels Civil and Moral (1597)
Pungent observations on his own changing world, on man and society, on politics, ambition, marriage, youth and age, education: all the major issues which concern Bacon as much as they do us. --Raphael and McLeish

Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human (1605)
For Bacon, it is not contemplation but productive activity which is the highest aim of philosophical inquiry. --Seymour Cain, Philosophy (1963), p. 131
Bacon ranks as the earliest prominent methodologist of scientific inquiry. He represents an effort to proceed beyond the crude and slovenly inductive procedure of a simple enumeration of affirmative observations. --Robert B. Downs

Wisdom of the Ancients (1619)

Novum Organum (1620)
For the first time, we hear the modern pragmatic notion of truth forcefully announced.
Also modern is Bacon's cry to make everything new--a new system of the sciences, a new method of inquiry, discoveries of new things. --Peter Wolff, Foundations of Science and Mathematics (1960), pp. 133-134
The novelty—according to Bacon's vision—lies in a new correlation between science and praxis. This is also given a theological application: the new correlation between science and praxis would mean that the dominion over creation —given to man by God and lost through original sin—would be reestablished. --Pope Benedict XVI, 'On Christian Hope' (Spe Salvi) 16, November 30, 2007

Apophthegms (1625)

New Atlantis (1626)
Where Leviticus ritually separates pure from impure with an eye to what is divine in man, Bacon's New Atlantis vivisects and recombines everything for the sake of healing man's animal body. --Eric Cohen, 'The Ends of Science', First Things, November 2006, p. 28

Sylva Sylvarum (1627)

Luis GONGORA y Argote (1561-1627) Poetry Archive

Congora: Poems

Solitudes (Soledades, 1613)

George CHAPMAN (1559-1634) The Online Books Page

The Poems (1941)

The Comedies (1970)

The Tragedies (1987)

Thomas KYD (1558-1594) The Online Books Page

The Spanish Tragedy (1592)

Sir Philip SIDNEY (1554-1586) The Online Books Page
I shall not want Honour in Heaven, / For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney / and have talk with Coriolanus / And other heroes of that kidney. --T. S. Eliot, 'A Cooking Egg'

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1590)
It has to be skimmed, and the original version is far more readable than the revision. Still, it is a remarkable fusion of political philosophy, picaresque adventure, chivalric romance, and tragicomedy... --Paul Dean, The New Criterion, January 2002, p. 70

Astrophel and Stella (1591)

An Apology for Poetry (1595)
unites prodigious learning to a style at once sinewy and supple, airy and weighty. --Paul Dean, The New Criterion, January 2002, p. 70

Sir Walter RALEIGH (1554-1618) The Online Books Page

The Discovery Of Guiana (1595)

History of the World (1614)

Poems (Collected Poems 1813)

Fulke GREVILLE, Lord Brooke (1554-1628) Luminarium Luminarium

Selectd Poems (1968)

Lazarillo de Tormes (anonymous, 1554) Parallel text

Agrippa D'AUBIGNE (1552-1630)

Les Tragiques (1616)

Sir Edward COKE (1552-1634) Liberty Library

A Commentary Upon Littleton (1628)

Edmund SPENSER (1552 or 1553-1599) The Online Books Page

Shepheardes Calendar (1579)

Complaints (1591)

Amoretti (1595)

An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie (Fowre Hymnes, 1596)

The Faerie Queen (1599)

Richard HAKLUYT (c. 1552-1616) The Online Books Page

The Principal Navigations of the English Nation (1589)

Sor JUANA Ines de la Cruz (1551-1595) Sor Juana Project

Poems (1985)

The Book of Dede Korkut (Kitab-i Dede Korkut 16th C.) Ohio State
Twelve epic tales in prose and verse as presented in sixteenth-century manuscripts. An Islamic coloring is superimposed on a setting tht reflects the pre-Islamic heroic age of the Oghuz Turks. --A Guide to Oriental Classics

The Book of Common Prayer (1549) The Online Books Page Wikipedia entry
The simple beauty of the Prayer Book's prose, especially in its collects (generally thought to have been composed by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer), displays perfect pitch for sound and rhymed balance... . --Michael Dirda

Giordano BRUNO (1548-1600) Esoteric Archives | The Online Books Page | Radical Adademy post

The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante 1584)

Miguel de CERVANTES Saavedra (1547-1616) The Online Books Page post | Walter Alexander Raleigh essay

The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1604, 1615)
Don Quixote, a gaunt country gentleman crazed by reading books of knight-errantry, sets out to redress the evils of the 17th-century world. --Raphael and McLeish

Exemplary Stories (Novelas ejemplares 1613)

Sir Francis DRAKE (c. 1545-1595) The Online Books Page

Sir Francis Drake Revived (1653)

Francis PRETTY The Online Books Page

Sir Francis Drake’s Famous Voyage Round the World (1580)

Captain Walter BIGGES (d. 1586) The Online Books Page

Sir Francis Drake's West Indian Voyage (1589)

Robert GARNIER (1544-1590)

Mark Antony (Marc-Antoine, 1578) Renaissance Editions

The Jewesses (Les Juives, 1583)

Torquato TASSO (1544-1595) The Online Books Page
Why is it that the Renaissance Italian poet Tasso, who fired imaginations from Milton and Dryden to Shelley, Byron, and Goethe, should now subsist as a decoration in scholarly footnotes instead of as a living presence? --Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, December 2000, p. 4

Jerusalem Delivered (1580)
A certain kind and degree of artificility, a certain very skilful balance of unity and variety, a certain tone of disciplined ardour--these prevail from the first line to those wholly satisfactory last words e scioglie il voto which Tasso had in mind before he first put pen to paper. --C. S. Lewis, from 'Tasso' in 'Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature'

Saint JOHN of the Cross (Juan de Yepes, later Juan de San Matia and Juan de La Cruz, 1542-1591) The Online Books Page

Poems (1993)
They are concerned with the path to perfect union with God, and Juan saw that he was forunate in his suffering, which made solitude and contemplation necessary. Frequent references to carnal love make the poems immediately attractive to secular readers. --Philip Ward

William GILBERT (1540-1603) Institute and Museum of the History of Science | Stern

On the Lodestone, Magnetic Bodies and On the Great Magnet the Earth (1600)

Garcilaso de la VEGA, "El Inca" (1539-1616) Golden Age Spanish Sonnets

The Incas (Comentarios Reales de los Incas 1609)

Edward HAIES (c. 1539-[?]) The Online Books Page

Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage To Newfoundland (1583)

Michel Eyquem de MONTAIGNE (1533-1592) The Online Books Page Petri Liukkonen biography | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Kenneth Rexroth review | post

Essays (1581, 1588)
The question of how a skeptic can live his life as a social and political agent is often asked, and here it is examined in 'attempts', or thought experiments. Nothing is asserted and everything can be doubted without despair or destructiveness. --Judith Shklar

Jean BODIN (1530-1596)

The Six Books on the State (1576)
[O]ne religious denomination could not be imposed by force. Religion, he saw, was greater than the symbolization used to contain it. --Jene M. Porter, The Review of Politics, Fall 2000, p. 808

Antonio FERREIRA (c. 1528-1569) The Online Books Page | Projecto Vercial

Poetry

Joachim Du BELLAY (1525-1560) Archive of Classic Poems

Regrets (1558)

Pierre de RONSARD (1524-1585) Poetry Portal

Odes (1550, 1552)

Elegies (Elegies, mascarades et bergeries, 1565)

Sonnets pour Helene (1578; Humbert Wolfe trans. 1934)

Luis Vaz de CAMOES [or CAMOENS] (1524-1580) The Online Books Page

The Lusiads (William C. Atkison translation 1952; Os Lusiadas 1572)
tells the story of the Portuguese overseas empire to its apogee in 1548... --Philip Ward

Gaspara STAMPA (1523-1554) Poem Hunter

Selected Poems (1994)

Fray LUIS de Leon (1520-1591) Los Poetas

The Unknown Light (1979)

Pedro CIEZA DE LEON (1518?-1560) Koeller Modern History Sourcebook | Zaro

Incas of Pedro Cieza de Leon (First Part 1553, Second Part 1871, Third Part 1979, Fourth Part 1909)

Henry HOWARD, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547) Luminarium

Selected Poems (1985) Luminarium

St. TERESA of Avila (1515-1582) The Online Books Page Allen

Vida (1588)
It was in 1562 that she founded her first convent (in Avila) and during the next three years she set down the story of her life at the request of her spiritual director, Francisco de Soto y Salazar. She writes pungently and frankly, as she speaks, with no idea of punctuation and little of grammar. --Philip Ward

Agustin de ZARATE (1514-1560) Virginia

The Discovery and Conquest of Peru (J. M. Cohen, trans. 1968; Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Peru, 1555)

Andreas VESALIUS (1514-1564)

On the Structure of the Human Body (1543) Northwestern
Here is depicted the birth of scientific anatomy, man's first clear and accurate knowledge of the foundation stone of medical science and of the whole science of the human body. --Robert B. Downs

Giorgio VASARI (1511-1574)

Lives of the Painters (Le Vite de' piu Eccellenti Pitttori, Scultori e Architettori 1550) Illustrated
traveled throughtout the length and breadth of Italy to collect oral testimony, written documents and manuscripts, and to see the paintings which he then described at first hand. --Philip Ward

Raphael HOLINSHED (d. c. 1580) Project Gutenberg

The Chronicles of England (1577)

Jean CALVIN (1509-1564) The Online Books Page Christian Classics Ethereal Library post
He denied God's will to save all mankind, taught that God created some to be saved--to the glory of His mercy--others to be eternally lost--to the glory of His justice, or rather of His vengeance; for Calvin denied the freedom of man's will and held that men were damned for sins which they were utterly unable to avoid committing. Like Luther, he taught that faith, in the new sense of man's confidence in hsi own election to eternal life, was the only means of salvation. Moreover, this faith was caused in a sinner's soul by God alone without any co-operation on his own part, the sinner being entirely passive. --M. L. Cozens, A Handbook of Heresies (abridged edition 1959), p. 75

Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536)
Theologians ground their systems in some specific aspect of divine revelation. Thomas Aquinas centered the 'Summa' on the perfection of nature by grace; Calvin based his 'Institutes' on the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God. --Christopher Levenick, Like a Mighty Wind, review essay, Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2006/07, p. 71

Ambrose PARE (1509-1590) post

Journeys in Diverse Places (1537-1569) Bartleby

WU Ch'eng-en (c. 1506-1581) Doran et al.

Monkey or The Journey to the West (Hsi-yu chi, c. 1570s) China Page
The work is a mixture of satire and folk tale, fictionalized history and religious allegory. Though it should be read as fantasy, not as a profound religious treatise, there is a serious meaning in Wu's treatment of society and bureaucracy. --G. L. Anderson, Masterpieces of the Orient (1961) p. 236
A highly imaginative fictional account of the epic pligrimages to India of the Buddhist monk Hsuan-tsang ... --A Guide to Oriental Classics

Sir Thomas WYATT (1503-1542) The Online Books Page Luminarium

Selected Poems (Harriman Scott, ed. 2003; Michael Smith, ed. 1974)

15th Century

Benvenuto CELLINI (1500-1571) The Online Books Page

Life of Benvenuto Cellini (1558-1564)
first published 1728
The artist as bohemian, free to disregard the laws and customs of ordinary men. --Raphael and McLeish

Maurice SCEVE (c. 1500-c. 1564) REC Music Foundation

Delie (1564)

Portuguese Voyages (1498-1663) (1953)

Charles David Ley, Ed.

Francois RABELAIS (c. 1495-1553) The Online Books Page D. S. Carne-Ross essay

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1535-1552)
Relish for excess, the French appetite, is here displayed at its most gluttonous, not only for food and sex but for ideas and the display of rhetorical virtuosity; the 16th century is anatomized literally and metaphorically--though at a length which inclines one (to one's loss) to make a chapter or two stand for the whole. --Raphael and McLeish

MARGUERITE de Valois (Marguerite D'Angouleme, 1492-1549) The Online Books Page
Sister of Francois. Wife first of the Duc d'Alencon, and then of Henri d'Albert, king of Navarre. Mother of Henry IV of France. Henry married a Margaret of Valois (1553-1615), daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de Medicis, who was known as Queen Margot. --ed.

Heptameron (Les Marguerites de la marguerite des princesses, 1558)

Bernal DIAZ del Castillo (1492-1581)

The Conquest of New Spain (1632) PowerPoint

1492 and All That

FUZULI (Suleyman Mehmet, c. 1490-c. 1556) Poetry Magic

Leyla and Mejnun (1535-1536)
...stems from an old Arabic legend of unrequited love among the Bedouins. ... Fuzuli's beautiful treatment of it as a mystic allegory is the best-known Turkish version of the romance. --A Guide to Oriental Classics

Francesco GUICCIARDINI (1483-1540) eNotes

The History of Italy (1561)

Martin LUTHER (1483-1546) The Online Books Page | The Small Catechism Project Wittenberg post
In one sentence: The Church teaches that God for Christ's sake imparts holiness: Luther taught that God for Christ's sake imputes holiness to the sinner. --M. L. Cozens, A Handbook of Heresies (abridged edition 1959), p. 71
the doctrine of justification by faith alone derives from Luther's effort to correct the individualist turn of Catholic theology, and from his sensitivity to the overwhelming need of man to love himself in the world, as God had loved him. --Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (1966) p. 207
Luther had what Wycliffe and Hus did not: technology. --Hugh Hewitt, 'Blog' 2005 p. 55
In the west, identity politics began in earnest with the Reformation. Martin Luther argued that salvation could be achieved only through an inner state of faith, and attacked the Catholic emphasis on works--that is, exterior conformity to a set of social rules. The Reformation thus identified true religiosity as an individual's subjective state, dissociating inner identity from outer practice. --Francis Fukuyama, Identity and Migration, Prospect, February 2007
The task of the Reformer, the work of the Reformer, was to bring God's Word to the people--the kind and gracious word of the Gospel--and to do that you need to have God speaking in German. --Phillip Cary
Luther & Zwingli / Should be treated singly; / L hated the peasants, / Z the Real Presence. --W. H. Auden

Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520)
was written by Luther after his realization that the breach between him and the papal church was complete and likely to be permanent. He wrote as a patriotic German rather than as a churchman or theologian. --Robert B. Downs

The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520)

The Freedom of a Christian (1520)

The Bondage of the Will (1525)

Commentary on Psalm 2 (1532)

Commentary on Psalm 110 (1539)

Table Talk (1566)

Baldassare CASTIGLIONE (1478-1529) The Online Books Page

The Book of the Courtier (Sir Thomas Hoby, trans., 1561; Il libro del Cortegiano, 1528)

Thomas MORE (1477-1535) The Online Books Page Wikipedia entry post
If only he had left theology to the theologians. --Erasmus
a model layman, living the Gospel to the full. He was a fine scholar and an ornament to his profession, a loving husband and father, humble in prosperity, courageous in adversity, humorous and godly. --Pope John Paul II, Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, May 28, 1982, Vol. V, 2, p. 1899
it was determination to avoid damnation for heresy which took Thomas More to the block. --Paul Dean, Donne's 'dialogue of one', The New Criterion, January 2007, p. 70

Utopia (1516)
unfolds the picture of a frugal, moral and equalitarian society that was the exact opposite of English society in More's day. --Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (3rd ed. 1950) Ch. XXIV p. 306
he envisioned the authoritarian communist world of his 'Utopia,' with its universal requirement of six hours' labor a day and a population that flocked voluntarily to improving pre-dawn lectures, as a detailed and practical alternative... --Anthony Grafton, Over the Rainbow, The New York Review of Books, November 30, 2000 p. 4
During his travels, the sailor had accidentally found the mythical island of Amaurote (Utopia), had lived there for five years, and was returning home with news of the perfect state. Highly unfavorable comparisons are drawn by the narrator between the inhabitants of this blessed isle and the people of England. --Robert B. Downs

MICHELANGELO Buonarroti (1475-1564) Neil R. Bonner fan site | see Giorgio Vasari biography Gregory Wolfe review | Robert Royal review | Creighton Gilbert review

Sonnets and Madrigals (1623)

Ludivico ARIOSTO (1474-1533)
the most prodigal imagination ever possessed by man. --Lord Acton

Orlando Furioso (1516) On-Line Medieval and Classical Library
From a poet of such fame and such mighty gifts we would gladly receive something better than the adventures of Orlando. --Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, translated by S. G. C. Middlemore (1878), (Random House 1944) p. 242
He has been able to fill poetic dreams with experience and wisdom, hope and determination. --Dante Della-Terza

Nicolaus COPERNICUS (1473-1543) Bartleby History of Mathematics Archive | Institute and Museum of the History of Science post
In an age when experimental method has achieved the dignity of dogma, it is worth emphasizing that astronomers and physicists undertook closer observations and more exact measurements only after Copernicus (d. 1543) had put an alternative to traditional Ptolemaic and Aristotelian theories before the learned world; and Copernicus did so, not on the basis of observations and measurements, but on the grounds of logical simplicity and aesthetic symmetry. --William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West, p. 593

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543)
Copernicus had opened the eyes of the most intelligent to the fact that the best way to get a clear grasp of the apparent movements of the planets in the heavens was to regard them as movements round the sun conceived as stationary. --Albert Einstein

WANG Yang-Ming (Wang Shou-Jen, 1472-1529) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Instructions for Practical Living and other neo-Confucian Writings Chan Wing-tsit, trans. (1963)
The principal Neo-Confucian philosopher of the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries, his philosophy of the mind drew on that of Chu Hsi, yet also provided the principal alternative to Chu Hsi's intellectualism in later Chinese thought, in regard to the role of moral intuition versus cognitive learning. --A Guide to Oriental Classics

Niccolo MACHIAVELLI (1469-1527) The Online Books Page The History Guide Isaiah Berlin essay | post
What unites Machiavelli's personal and political sides is his desire that one's beliefs reflect life as it is actually lived rather than as we think it should be lived. --Alexander Stille, The New York Times Book Review, December 3, 2000 p. 90

Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy (c. 1513)

The Mandrake, a Comedy (Mandragola 1518)

Florentine History (Istorie fiorentine 8 vol. 1520-1525)

The Prince (1532) Kenneth Rexroth review
His realistic acceptance of the evil in political means and its inevitability, indeed indispensability, in striving for heroic ends has shocked critics of politics for five hundred years, yet gain the book its status as what Isaiah Berlin called the first work of political science. --Richard E. Neustadt

Desiderius ERASMUS (c. 1466-1536) The Online Books Page
someone who never made the mistake of putting ideas before flesh and blood... --Paul Johnson, 'The Human Race', The New Criterion, November 2006, p. 12

The Praise of Folly (1509)

Colloquies (1518-1533)

Gil VICENTE (c. 1465-c. 1536) Poetry Archive

Quem tem farelos? (1508)

Auto da India (1509)

Farso do Velho da Horta (1512)

Auto dos Fisicos (1512)
The two 1512 plays are both comic triumphs, the one ridiculing an old man looking for a mistress, and the other on a a priestly buffoon who falls ill with love and is treated by a succession of outrageous doctors. --Philip Ward

Fernando de ROJAS (c. 1465-1541)

La Comedia de Calisto y Melibea (1499, La Celestina)
concerns the love of the nobly-born youth Calisto for Melibea, the lovely daughter of the Jew Pleberio. She rejects Calisto, so his servant Sempronio advises making use of the old go-between Celestina. --Philip Ward
J. M. Cohen translaton, The Spanish Bawd (1964)
Lesley B. Simpson translation, Celestina (1955)

William DUNBAR (1460-1520) Poem Hunter

Selected Poems (Harriet Harvey Wood, ed., 2006)

John SKELTON (1460-1529) The Online Books Page

Selected Poems (John Skelton and Gerald Hammond, eds., 2003)

LEONARDO Da Vinci (1452-1519) The Online Books Page post

Notebooks (1970; The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci 1883)
An indispensable treasury of original insights, jokes, inventions, and observations by one of the most remarkable men the world has ever known. --Philip Ward

Christopher COLUMBUS (1451-1506) Columbus Navigation post
but the greatest of a long line of Italians who, in the service of the western nations, sailed into distant seas. --Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, translated by S. G. C. Middlemore (1878), (Random House 1944) p. 210
It was the achievement of Columbus to convert conjecture into certainty, to substitute knowledge for hypothesis, and to open a way across the Atlantic which has never since been closed. --Cecil Jane

Letter Concerning Newly Discovered Islands (1493)

CHANDIDAS (15th Century) Poet Seers

Love Songs of Chandidas (1916; Shri-Krishna-kirtana)

Diego de SAN PEDRO (fl. 1450) Cal. Santa Barbara

Prison of Love (Carcel de amor, 1492)

Jorge MANRIQUE (1440-1479)

Stanzas about the Death of his Father (Coplas a la muerte de su padre, 1477)

Matteo Maria BOIARDO (1434-1494) Project Gutenberg

Orlando innamorato ("Orlando in Love" 1486)

VILLON (Francois de Montcorbier, 1431-after 1462) The Online Books Page

The Great Testament (1461) Eric Ormsby review
a great poem of 2,000 or so lines which develops the 'legacy' theme but also interpolates the great ballads (some written earlier) by which he is remembered... --Philip Ward

KABIR (c. 1430-1518) The Online Books Page

One Hundred Poems of Kabir (Rabindranath Tagore, with Evelin Underhill, trans., 1915)

Nur ad-Din 'Abd ar-Rahman JAMI (1414-1492) Wikipedia entry

Baharistan (1481; Edward Rehatsek translation 1887)

Mabinogion (White Book of Rhydderch, Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch c. 1350, and Red Book of Hergest, Llyfr Coch Hergest c. 1382-1410) The Online Books Page

English and Scottish Popular Ballads The Online Books Page Nelson | KWIC Concordance Rexroth

Edited from the Collections of Francis James Child (1825-1896)

see H. C. Sargent and G. L. Kittridge, eds. 1904

\/ 1101-1400 | 1601-1700 /\

Revised December 2, 2012.

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