Inspiration and Technique Ancient to Modern Views on Beauty and Art

«This book is ambitious in scope, and, whilst structured around the central polarity of inspiration and technique, incorporates discussion of some of the most fundamental concerns of aesthetic theory. It brings into focus the persistence of questions about the genesis of art and its evaluation, and shows how variously such questions have been interpreted at different periods and in different texts. But above all it demonstrates the fundamental importance of Plato and Aristotle in the history of Western thinking about art.» (Penelope Murray, British Journal of Aesthetics)

The Editors: John Roe is Reader in English and Related Literature at the University of York (UK). His interests are Shakespeare and Italian Renaissance influence, particularly Petrarch and Machiavelli on whom he has written. He has also produced an edition of the poems of Shakespeare and is currently writing a short monograph on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Michele Stanco is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Naples, ‘Federico II’ (Italy). His publications are mainly on Renaissance literature and culture – more particularly on Shakespeare, dramatic genres, the history play, the sonnet sequence, George Puttenham, Elizabethan criticism and aesthetics. He is currently working on the ‘reformation’ of the self in the Renaissance as related to the classical notion of ‘form’.