A new introduction and a fully updated bibliography make the second edition of this established text an indispensable resource for students and teachers of English poetry.

Since publication in 1979 Isabel Rivers' sourcebook has established itself as the essential guide to English Renaissance poetry. It:

• provides an account of the main classical and Christian ideas, outlining their meaning, their origins and their transmission to the Renaissance;
• illustrates the ways in which Renaissance poetry drew on classical and Christian ideas;
• contains extracts from key classical and Christian texts and relates these to the extracts of the English poems which draw on them;
• includes suggestions for further reading, and an invaluable bibliographical appendix.