ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the reinstatement of the courtly aspect of Elizabethan humanism. It pursues the Ciceronian origins of Elizabethan humanism. C. S. Lewis was no friend to Renaissance humanism, but his unsympathetic account of its pedantry and vulgarity in his monumental study of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama should be noted. It provides an enlightening critique of the literary character of Elizabethan humanism which has rarely been matched by later writers, and may profitably be set against a recent tendency amongst some Renaissance scholars to more-or-less openly accept and declare their descent from old humanists. The Elizabethans inherited from the works of Cicero the notion that humanitas was both 'inclusive' Cooper's 'state of humaine nature commen to us all' and also 'exclusive'. There are one or two exceptions to the general rule that the Ciceronian urbanity is transformed into Elizabethan 'courtliness'.
