The Model of Poesy is one of the most exciting literary discoveries of recent years. A manuscript treatise on poetics written by William Scott in 1599, at the end of the most revolutionary decade in English literary history, it includes rich discussions of the works of Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries. Scott's work presents a powerful and coherent theoretical account of all aspects of poetics, from the nature of representation to the rules of versification, with a commitment to relating theory to contemporary practice. For Scott, any theory of literature must make sense not of the classics but of what English writers are doing now: Scott is at the same time the most scholarly and the most relevant of English Renaissance critics. In his groundbreaking Cambridge University Press edition, Gavin Alexander presents a text of The Model of Poesy framed by a detailed introduction and an extensive commentary, which together demonstrate the range and value of Scott's thought. This blog aims to supplement the edition.

Thursday, 9 July 2015

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).
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