The themes of "erring," "education," and "development" were often linked with the master-images of the garden and labyrinth in Renaissance writing. Humanist concerns about natural order, temporality, and history could be situated in these poetic realms insofar as they symbolized fluctuating aspects of a more complex reality. The imaginative use of the garden and labyrinth is widely detectable in the generic structures and stylistic patterns of the age.
"...this compendium of comparative studies...bears ample testimony to the erudition and extensive reading of its author." (Daniel Casper, Daphnis)
"I esteem and enjoy Gillespie's wide-ranging - but never unfocused - essayistic efforts." (Richard H. Lawson, Monatshefte)
"In its range, independence of judgment combined with critical awareness, and virtuosity of style, this book is definitely more than the sum of its parts, though the parts stand up on their own." (Joseph B. Dallett, Seminar)
"One of Gerald Gillespie's strongest assets is his ability to envision simultaneously a multiplicity of literary works and to discern pattern and significance where others perceive only variety. In this twelve-essay collection Gillespie not only marks similarities and differences among major Renaissance and Baroque figures but also succedes in making his distinctions meaningful with respect to such larger themes as the integration of literature and emerging scientific thought, the search for methods of universal communication, and the changing visions of space and temporality that informed Renaissance and Baroque literature." (Barton W. Browning, Comparative Literature Studies)
"This collection of essays, almost all of them published earlier in one form or another in leading periodicals, is probably the most challenging book on the Renaissance and Baroque Literature that has appeared since Peter Skrine's 'The Baroque. Literature and Culture in 17th Century Europe' (1978). ... In contrast to many other nationally oriented studies, here the reader encounters a 'garden' of supranational dimensions attesting to Gillespie's truly astounding erudition." (Gerhart Hoffmeister, Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature)
"Gerald Gillespie's readings of the garden and labyrinth of time are essential to our understanding of what we do and what we are as readers of texts. In this volume Gillespie has concentrated and adjusted the focus of several previous articles and papers to support an extraordinary insight into the late Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern World Theater, that is into the self." (Raymond Adolph Prier, Annals of Scholarship)
"I esteem and enjoy Gillespie's wide-ranging - but never unfocused - essayistic efforts." (Richard H. Lawson, Monatshefte)
"In its range, independence of judgment combined with critical awareness, and virtuosity of style, this book is definitely more than the sum of its parts, though the parts stand up on their own." (Joseph B. Dallett, Seminar)
"One of Gerald Gillespie's strongest assets is his ability to envision simultaneously a multiplicity of literary works and to discern pattern and significance where others perceive only variety. In this twelve-essay collection Gillespie not only marks similarities and differences among major Renaissance and Baroque figures but also succedes in making his distinctions meaningful with respect to such larger themes as the integration of literature and emerging scientific thought, the search for methods of universal communication, and the changing visions of space and temporality that informed Renaissance and Baroque literature." (Barton W. Browning, Comparative Literature Studies)
"This collection of essays, almost all of them published earlier in one form or another in leading periodicals, is probably the most challenging book on the Renaissance and Baroque Literature that has appeared since Peter Skrine's 'The Baroque. Literature and Culture in 17th Century Europe' (1978). ... In contrast to many other nationally oriented studies, here the reader encounters a 'garden' of supranational dimensions attesting to Gillespie's truly astounding erudition." (Gerhart Hoffmeister, Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature)
"Gerald Gillespie's readings of the garden and labyrinth of time are essential to our understanding of what we do and what we are as readers of texts. In this volume Gillespie has concentrated and adjusted the focus of several previous articles and papers to support an extraordinary insight into the late Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern World Theater, that is into the self." (Raymond Adolph Prier, Annals of Scholarship)