The classics and English Renaissance poetry: Three case studies (Yale studies in English)

"A cliche of literary history states that Renaissance literature began with and remained deeply influenced by the "rediscovery" of classical antiquity. Gordon Braden reexamines this commonplace by means of three case studies devoted to three distict kinds of use that English poets made of classical materials.", these being "Metamorphoses", the Greek poem "Hero and Leader" and Robert Herrick's use of classical authors, both as sources of spot quotations and as models for a self-contained poetic "world". Martial, the Anacreontea and Horace are discussed in detail, and parallels between Herrick and Horace are redefined and reevaluated. "Braden believes that the Ranaissance poets decomposed the ancients and then harnessed the energy thereby released, rather than that they absorbed and adapted the formal structures and techniques of the classical poets."