A book used so widely and so long by so many, yet displeasing to others, is bound to be profitable to modern students of sixteenth-century society and of literary history. Writers have found in it a fertile source of scenes, plots, or dialogue. Rabelais borrowed freely from it. Lyly. Webster, Nashe, and Jonson knew it, as did other Elizabethans. Sterne, Scott, and Reade used whole colloquies for scenes in novels. That Shakespeare missed such a book is most improbable, even though his familiarity with it cannot be proved beyond question. In short, it was one of the books most educated men were expected to know, whether they had read it in or out of school. If mishandled in the classroom, it must have been a dull affair; but school can ruin any book. If read as literature, it must have given pleasure of various kinds and in various degrees. It still does. From the translator's introduction SomeThingz
Bound, halfcloth with original dustjacket (protected with removable cellophane), xxxiii+662pp., 17x25cm., in very good condition.
17x25cm
662 pp.
University of Chicago Press 1965 Chicago
