sundry shapes

The Model of Poesy is now available in paperback. The list price is £19.99/€28.67/US$29.99/CDN$33.95.

this clew of discipline

A wonderful article by Michael Hetherington, '"AN INSTRUMENT OF REASON": WILLIAM SCOTT'S LOGICAL POETICS", has just been published in The Review of English Studies. Hetherington deepens our understanding of Scott's use of logic to construct and order his thinking and its presentation in the Model, showing how he draws on the texts and teachings of important logicians such as Melanchthon and Zabarella but also how Scott exemplifies 'precisely that fusion of contemporary discourses and approaches we should expect from a well-read non-specialist of the period.' I especially enjoyed the discussion of Scott's use of the ordo resolutivus (logically treating an art in terms of its end), and the concluding account of Scott's idea of poetic creativity and its implications for our understanding of contemporary literary culture. As Hetherington puts it: 'Scott’s logic ... commits him to a certain model of the mind, and propels him towards thoughtful and innovative accounts of creativity. While Scott draws extensively on Aristotle’s Poetics, an equally profound Aristotelianism—embodying an implicit poetics of its own—emerges from his use of the whole logical, metaphysical and ethical matrix of Aristotle’s works and his early modern interlocutors.'

the diversity of the subject

Scott's Model is the subject of a special issue of Sidney Journal, featuring essays by Gavin Alexander, Sarah Howe, Peter Auger, Christian Anton Gerard, and Stuart Farley, a shorter note by Russ McDonald, and a review of the edition by Donald Stump. See left for the contents page of Sidney Journal, 33.1 (2015).

beyond the seas

Scott has now crossed the Atlantic for what may be the second time (see his will, appendix 3, and discussion in the Introduction, xxvii-xxviii) and has been published in North America. Further details on the CUP sites in the US and Canada.

reddendo

The edition was published in the UK on 10 October 2013 and will be available in the US in November 2013. The C.U.P. website includes some generous selections from the edition as well as hosting my original spelling edition of the unique manuscript of Scott's treatise. Follow the links on the right of this page.

Do let me know what you think of Scott and of the edition, and please do point out any errors, however small!