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Puttenham, George

Born: 1529, London?

Died: 1590/1591, London

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Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy
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Abstract

George Puttenham was a courtier and writer during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1565–1603).

His major work, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), was published anonymously but is almost certainly by Puttenham. It is a handbook on poetry and rhetoric, offering the aspiring courtier advice on how to write well. It summarizes familiar concepts of poetry as civilizing art and argues for the vernacular’s worthiness as a literary language. The book’s greatest contribution is a list of figures of speech together with original English terms.

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References

Primary Literature

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Correspondence to Florence Hazrat .

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Hazrat, F. (2022). Puttenham, George. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_876

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