Abraham Fraunce, 'The Shepherds' Logic' and Other Dialectical Writings

Abraham Fraunce's The Shepherds' Logic (c. 1585) is one of the first English adaptations of Petrus Ramus's Dialecticae libri duo (1556). Preserved in a manuscript also containing two shorter essays on Ramist dialectic, the work was later modified and enlarged for publication as The Lawyers' Logic (1588). But Fraunce's substantial and almost exclusive use of Edmund Spenser's The Shepherds' Calendar (1579) as the source for practical examples makes the manuscript treatise a unique document re...