The Art of English Poesy

"The first response to this critical edition of Puttenham's Art of English Poesy ought to be gratitude. Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn, both of whom have made substantial scholarly contributions to a rhetorical understanding of early modern literature, have done all students, teachers, and scholars of early modern English literature a great service. This is now the best, most readily available edition of Puttenham’s text. If this new edition means that Puttenham’s Art is taught more often, that will be a good thing. Students will now more likely be examining an art of English poetry and not just a sociology of it in the wonderful prose argument in this historicized, yet aesthetically aware edition of the text. We should exhibit our gratitude by ordering it for our libraries and requiring it for our classes." -- Scott Crider * Sixteenth Century Journal *
"This fine edition of George Puttenham's Art of English Poesie, by Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn, presents a modernized, extensively glossed, and annotated text. The edition also provides a long, full, and often brilliant introduction, which sketches Puttenham’s biography, rehearses the evidence for his authorship of the Art, describes the cultural materials on which the book draws, analyzes its poetics, and discusses it as an embodiment of its author’s ambitions." -- William A. Oram * Modern Philology *
"Whigham and Rebhorn have undertaken an enormous task in annotating and modernizing such a difficult text, written in frequently complex prose and rife with obscure and sometimes concealed references.... Their readable, fully annotated version of Puttenham's treatise, in consultation with a facsimile of the 1589 text, will be extremely useful to students and seasoned literary critics." -- Stephen B. Dobranski * Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 *
"Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn have done a major service to everyone seriously interested in English Renaissance literature and culture. Puttenham's curious, encyclopedic, and haunting book is of enormous interest and importance, and we have never had a usable and annotated edition of it. Whigham and Rebhorn have provided a readable and fully, usefully, and intelligently annotated text. That in itself would have been a major service. But their introduction is an extremely useful work of criticism and scholarship that is also a major contribution. We are all in their debt." -- Richard Strier, University of Chicago
"In their insightful introduction and notes to The Art of English Poesy, Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn show how George Puttenham complicates poetic 'decorum' and 'decency' by insisting on the 'abuses' and 'dissembling' at work in figurative language. Their learned and informed edition of this seminal English ars poetica illuminates the equivocal subtleties and turbulent energies informing Renaissance literary thought." -- Richard C. McCoy, Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY