The Renaissance Crisis of Exemplarity

The Imitation of Christ in English Reformation Writing

“…3 3 Greene describes early modern imitatio as ‘a precept and activity which … embraced not only literature, but pedagogy, grammar, rhetoric, esthetics, the visual arts, music, historiography, politics, and philosophy’ (1) and had implications ‘for the theory of style, the philosophy of history, and for conceptions of the self’ (2). For other general treatments of imitation and exemplarity in the early modern period, see Lyons; Pigman; Quint; Rigolot; and Steadman. …”

“…But it makes possible an emergent sense of identity, personal and cultural’ (19). See also Rigolot; Quint, chap. 1.…”