The Unimagined in the English Renaissance: Poetry and the Limits of Mimesis

When we read poetry, we tend to believe that we are getting a glimpse of the interior of the poet’s mind—pictures from the poet’s imagination relayed through the representative power of language. But poets themselves sometimes express doubt (usually indirectly) that poetic language has the capability or the purpose of revealing these images. This book examines description in Renaissance poetry, aiming to reveal its complexity and variability, its distinctiveness from prose description, and ...