Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
John Leland. 'De uiris illustribus'. On famous men . Edited and translated by James P. Carley (with Caroline Brett ). (Studies and Texts, 172. British Writers of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, 1.) Pp. clx+868+8 plates. Ontario : Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies /Oxford : Bodleian Library , 2010. £120. 978 0 88844 1172 0 ; 978 1 85124 367 9
Reviews
The significance of John Leland (c. 1503-52) in the growth of English humanism in the earlier sixteenth century was presented a generation ago by J. W. Binns in his ground-breaking survey of neo-Latin writings in Renaissance England. This account, which stressed Leland's activities as a neo-Latin poet whose verse addressed contemporaries, expressed his aspirations, and memorialised events of national significance, prioritised those works printed in his lifetime or later in the century. But much of what was most valuable in Leland lay unfinished and...