Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature

A wide-ranging study of a concept which underpinned Renaissance literature and continues to absorb contemporary thinkers.

R. S. White (Author)

9780521481427, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 November 1996

308 pages
23.6 x 16 x 2.8 cm, 0.62 kg

"This fine, groundbreaking study analyzes the literature of the period from More to Milton for its engagement of the tradition of natural law, once crucial but now hardly ever remembered until very recently. This is a rich and important book." Anthony Dimatteo, Spenser Newsletter

Natural law, whether grounded in human reason or divine edict, encourages men to follow virtue and shun vice. The concept dominated Renaissance thought, where its literary equivalent, poetic justice, underpinned much of the period's creative writing. R. S. White's study examines a wide range of Renaissance texts, by More, Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare and Milton, in the light of these developing ideas of Natural Law. It shows how writers as radically different as Aquinas and Hobbes formulated versions of Natural Law which served to maintain socially established hierarchies. For Aquinas, Natural Law always resided in the individual's conscience, whereas Hobbes thought individuals had limited access to virtue and therefore needed to be coerced into doing good by the state. White shows how the very flexibility and antiquity of Natural Law enabled its appropriation and application by thinkers of all political persuasions in a debate that raged throughout the Renaissance and which continues in our own time.

Preface
Acknowledgements: 1. Natural Law in history and Renaissance literature
2. The heritage of classical Natural Law
3. The reception of Natural Law in Renaissance England
4. Law and literature in sixteenth-century England
5. More's Utopia
6. 'Love is the fulfilling of the law': Arcadia and Love's Labour's Lost
7. 'Hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree': The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure
8. Shakespeare's The History of King Lear
9. Milton and Natural Law
Epilogue: Hobbes and the demise of classical Natural Law
Appendix: Aquinas on the right to own private property
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]