Humanism and Style

Clarence Miller's Humanism and Style: Essays on Erasmus and More provides an illuminating and circumstantial engagement with the important works of two great humanists, especially their masterpieces, The Praise of Folly and Utopia. He shows how they were deeply influenced by the very medieval world that they rejected as they were seeking to recover vital connections to the classics and the church fathers. Miller's essays cover a complex terrain that includes the rhetorical functions of stylistic shifts, the deployment of proverbial wisdom, engagement with ancient texts in an early modern setting, and the challenges of maintaining a stance of faith in a world always muddied in its history. These essays disclose a sensibility in the work of Erasmus and More that is already attuned to many insights that have emerged with contemporary literary theory.