The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson

InTheAgeofElizabethintheAgeofJohnson,JackLynchexploreseighteenth-centuryBritishconceptionsoftheRenaissance,andthehistorical,intellectual,andculturalusestowhichthepastwasputduringtheperiod.Scholars,editors,historians,religiousthinkers,linguistsandliterarycriticsoftheperiodalldefinedthemselvesinrelationto'thelastage'or'theageofElizabeth'.Seventeenth-andeighteenth-centurythinkersreworkedolderhistoricalschemestosuittheirownneeds,turningtotheagesofPetrarchandPoliziano,ErasmusandScaliger,Shakespeare,Spenser,andQueenElizabethtodefinetheircultureincontrasttotheprecedingage.Theyderivedapowerfulsenseofmodernityfromthecomparison,whichprovedessentialtotheconstitutionofanationalcharacter.Thisinterdisciplinarystudywillbeofinteresttoculturalaswellasliteraryhistoriansoftheeighteenthcentury.