SOURCE: "Rhetoric, Poetics, and Theory of Praise," in The Enduring Monument: A Study of the Idea of Praise in Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice, The University of North Carolina Press, 1962, pp. 24-42.

Below, Hardison examines the influence of classical authors on sixteenth-century poets in terms of their praise of public figures and the shaping of their subjects' reputions through poetry.

… To trace all the ramifications of the theory of praise during the sixteenth century would be to write a small-scale history of Renaissance criticism. Therefore, the present survey makes no pretense of being complete. Its object is to sketch a few representative variations of the theory of praise and to demonstrate the continuity of this theory throughout the period.

The keynote of the period was struck by its most dazzling uomo universale, Lorenzo de'Medici, in a letter prefacing an anthology of Italian poetry which he prepared for Frederick...