Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

This scholarly work explores how Platonic ideas shaped English poetry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, treating the entire poetic output of the era as a collective expression of contemporary spiritual and philosophical currents. By tracing the transmission of Plato’s thought through figures such as Marsilio Ficino and Plotinus, the author shows how concepts of love, beauty, and the divine were reinterpreted within a Christian framework and woven into the verse of the period.

The study adopts a strictly critical lens, relying on original Latin translations and careful textual analysis of the poets’ language, while deliberately avoiding biographical digressions. Readers will gain a clear picture of how notions of holiness, temperance, and the nature of the soul informed the poetic imagination, offering fresh insight into the intellectual backdrop that underlies the era’s most celebrated verses.