The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More

A comprehensive overview of the life and times of Thomas More, including in-depth studies of his major written works.

This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to the life and times of the humanist Thomas More. In addition to accounts of his public life and personal relationships, there are in-depth studies of his rhetoric and major written works, including their reception since the sixteenth century.This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the life and work of a major figure of the modern world. Combining breadth of coverage with depth, the book opens with essays on More's family, early life and education, his literary humanism, virtuoso rhetoric, illustrious public career and ferocious opposition to emergent Protestantism, and his fall from power, incarceration, trial and execution. These chapters are followed by in-depth studies of five of More's major works - Utopia, The History of King Richard the Third, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation and De Tristitia Christi - and a final essay on the varied responses to the man and his writings in his own and subsequent centuries. The volume provides an accessible overview of this fascinating figure to students and other interested readers, whilst also presenting, and in many areas extending, the most important modern scholarship on him.