Rayna Kalas is Associate Professor of English at Cornell University.
"In Frame, Glass, Verse, Rayna Kalas shows the way the mindset worked when poesis was still the same as techne. In the figurative language and its subtle complexity and multiple meanings of Renaissance literature, she finds the conceptual frame, the reflective mirror or 'perspective glass,' the power of prosody and what Coleridge was to call 'the esemplastic power of the imagination.' ... The result is nothing less than a new window opening on Renaissance literature. We see through this 'magic casement,' as Keats put it, the way those texts were first intended to be seen, not distorted by our more modern ways of thought or ideas about the nature and use of literature which was constructed and intended as a 'through-shine' communication but created by minds rather unlike our twenty-first century ones."-Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance "In a book filled with compelling moments of insight and brilliance, Rayna Kalas argues for a 'Renaissance' wherein object and subject, thing and word, nature and craft are moving toward modern conceptualizations of separation but are at the same time very much involved with each other. Kalas juggles a number of conceptual balls, each of which has double or multiple meanings in the period-most important, 'frame,' 'glass'/'mirror,' and 'perspective'-showing in each case how more is going on than meets the modern eye. It is a difficult task but one that leads to fascinating observations and breathtaking readings of the Renaissance and its texts."-Patricia Fumerton, University of California, Santa Barbara "Throughout Frame, Glass, Verse Rayna Kalas displays a formidable intellect coupled with unhurried exposition and painstaking attention to detail. The writing is lucid, graceful, authoritative, and felicitous throughout. Kalas brings to bear a wide range of pertinent critical commentary in art history, the history of the book, and continental Renaissance studies. Frame, Glass, Verse is obligatory reading for early modernists and has much to offer readers interested in the place of the Renaissance in cultural and philosophical history."-Jonathan Crewe, Willard Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Director, Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College "Sophisticated in its theoretical analyses, acute in its interpretations of texts ranging from Gascoigne's Steele Glas to the poetry of Shakespeare and Spenser, this book is important and illuminating. Its wide-ranging explorations encompass subjects from devotional practices to the visual arts, in so doing participating in the contemporary project of reinterpreting texts in relation to technical and artisanal practices."-Heather Dubrow, Tighe-Evans Professor and John Bascom Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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