The Myth of the Renaissance in Nineteenth-Century Writing

We readily use the term `Renaissance' today without understanding that it is a comparatively new historical idea. This innovative and wide-ranging study traces the genesis and development of the concept of the Renaissance in the literary, religious, political, and critical writing of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among the authors discussed are Voltaire, Ruskin, Browning, George Eliot, Swinburne, Arnold, and Pater.