Publisher's Synopsis
This volume studies the way in which various poets of the Renaissance addressed the question of subject matter through poetic invention. From Petrarch to Ronsard, the problem of the poetic subject offers a perspective on the development of an art which felt itself to be different from all others, but had trouble deciding in what sense. Between the unceasing rush of occasional writing, the requirement to find a fitting topic, and the urge to envision poetry in general, the hierarchy of possible subjects became the site of recurring conflicts, whose focus was the place of poetry itself within an order of discourse governed by the rhetoric of praise. Thus, poets never stopped altering their attitudes with respect to the "topics" amongst which they were supposedly "free" to choose.
