Roger Ascham and His Sixteenth-Century World

Book excerpt: The life of Roger Ascham (1515/16–1568) coincided with the reigns of four Tudor monarchs, the rise and death of Luther, the Council of Trent and the wholesale division of Christendom. He operated in arenas including Cambridge University, the court, the continent and the capital, and his writings engaged with the most important intellectual concerns of his age, including humanism, educational reform, religion and politics. In this volume historians, literary specialists and classicists have worked together both to re-evaluate more familiar territory in Ascham’s life and work, and to illuminate previously untapped sources. Their essays reveal Ascham as a considerably more significant figure than previous scholarship has suggested. Two appendices provide valuable further biographical and bibliographical material. Contributors: Andrew Burnett, Cyndia Susan Clegg, J.S. Crown, Sam Kennerley, Ceri Law, Micha Lazarus, John F. McDiarmid, Lucy R. Nicholas, Mike Pincombe, Richard Rex, Cathy Shrank, and Tracey A. Sowerby.