howing that secularist accounts of modernity cannot explain the development of Sidney's idea of creativity, Mack offers a version of the birth of modernity in which sacred and secular values are not necessarily opposed. Unlike previous accounts, his accommodates what are now recognized to be the continuities between medieval and Renaissance culture, between the Renaissance and Romanticism, and between theological speculation and literary theory. Sidney's Poetics is essential reading not only for students and scholars of Renaissance literature and literary theory but also for all who want to understand how human beings write and read creatively.
