Thomas Parnell's fame has often seemed to depend more on his important friendships and the considerable influence of a tiny handful of his poems than on his total literary achievement. Recent criticism, however, has established that his work is the...

The medieval ars moriendi never really died as a genre, but rather went underground and then, Arethusa-like, resurfaced in such secular contexts as the soliloquy in Hamlet 3.1 56-88, Raleigh's "Passionate Man's Pilgrimage," and Marvell's "Garden." It showed a remarkable recrudescence, above all,...

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