Ronald Carter

“Milton argued, in 1649, after the execution of Charles I, that a people 'free by nature' had a right to overthrow a…

— Ronald Carter

“Johnson's later life, from 1763, is among the best documented of all literary lives. James Boswell gave himself the enormous task, after…

— Ronald Carter

“SHAKESPEARE What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast,…

— Ronald Carter

“THE METAPHYSICAL POETS Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime (Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress)…

— Ronald Carter

“Two literary figures bridge the gap between the mediaeval age and the Renaissance. They are Sir Thomas Malory, the author of Le…

— Ronald Carter

“One of the first books of travel, giving European readers some insight into the unfamiliar world of the Orient, was published in…

— Ronald Carter

“Shakespeare's plays do not present easy solutions. The audience has to decide for itself. King Lear is perhaps the most disturbing in…

— Ronald Carter

“The language of Shakespeare is the first and lasting affirmation of the great changes that took place in the sixteenth century, leaving…

— Ronald Carter

“Chaucer's world in The Canterbury Tales brings together, for the first time, a diversity of characters, social levels, attitudes, and ways of…

— Ronald Carter

“The beliefs and behaviour of the Restoration reflect the theories of society put forward by Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan, which was…

— Ronald Carter

“In the humanist world following Erasmus, man is at the centre of the universe. Man becomes largely responsible for his own destiny,…

— Ronald Carter

“Few poets better convey the uneasy transition from Victorianism to Modernism than Thomas Hardy. His novels, written between 1870 and 1895, made…

— Ronald Carter

“The range and variety of Chaucer's English did much to establish English as a national language. Chaucer also contributed much to the…

— Ronald Carter

“Christian monks and nuns were, in effect, the guardians of culture, as they were virtually the only people who could read and…

— Ronald Carter

“Revolution was the great nightmare of eighteenth-century British society, and when first the American Revolution of 1776, then the French Revolution of…

— Ronald Carter

“No single English intellectual symbolises the idea of Renaissance man more than Bacon. He wrote on aspects of law, science, history, government,…

— Ronald Carter

“Henry Fielding, a highly successful satiric dramatist until the introduction of censorship in 1737, began his novel-writing career with Shamela, a pastiche…

— Ronald Carter

“The character and the play of Hamlet are central to any discussion of Shakespeare's work. Hamlet has been described as melancholic and…

— Ronald Carter

“At the end of the 1400s, the world changed. Two key dates can mark the beginning of modern times. In 1485, the…

— Ronald Carter

“The Restoration did not so much restore as replace. In restoring the monarchy with King Charles II, it replaced Cromwell's Commonwealth and…

— Ronald Carter

“The concept of an author, the single creative person who gives the text 'authority', only comes later in this period. Most Old…

— Ronald Carter

“It is the voice of everyday people, rather than of a self-conscious 'artist', that we hear in Caedmon's Hymn, and in such…

— Ronald Carter

“All Renaissance drama, especially the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, is profoundly concerned with shifting power relations within society. The individual was…

— Ronald Carter

“John Milton has, since his own lifetime, always been one of the major figures in English literature, but his reputation has changed…

— Ronald Carter

“In the eighteenth century, the Scottish Enlightenment focused attention on Glasgow and Edinburgh as centres of intellectual activity. The Scottish Enlightenment was…

— Ronald Carter