This book reassesses Renaissance English literature and its place in Elizabethan society. It examines, in particular, the role of Italianate literary imitation in addressing the ethical and political issues of the sixteenth century.

Alistair Fox was educated at the University of Canterbury (MA) and the University of Western Ontario, where he took his doctorate as a Commonwealth Scholar. He has held visiting fellowships at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and All Souls College, Oxford, and is currently Professor of English at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His previous books include Thomas More: History and Providence (1982); Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics, and Reform, 1500-1550 (with John Guy) (1986); Politics and Literature in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII (1989); and Utopia: An Elusive Vision (1993).