ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the major figures of Shakespeare, Sidney and Spenser, George Puttenham, putative author of The Arte of English Poesie, remains a key figure in the argument. The fairly brief critical history isn't one that can be presented to any hypothetical general audience or readership, since its events are events only in the context of academic criticism and indeed within a fairly restricted professional field, that of the English Renaissance. The book becomes a revelation of the impossibility of 'the critical profession', of nostalgia for a critical role no longer even capable of being attempted. It serves to elicit recognition, but only at the price of its own exemplary failure. As a history, the narrative that follows is to a significant degree one of encounter with, and ambivalence towards, historicism.
