SOURCE: "The Discovery of America and European Renaissance Literature," in Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. XIII, No. 2, June, 1976, pp. 100-15.

In the following essay, Adams discusses the treatment of the theme of the New World in several literary genres during the Renaissance.

There is great danger in talking about the "Renaissance," almost as much danger as there is in using other such terms—"Classicism," "Romanticism," "Baroque." Tags are neat but they are constricting and, ultimately, confusing. Haydn's fine study [The Counter-Renaissance, 1950] has suggested that to avoid a "doctrinaire approach" we can demonstrate the diversity of the period by speaking of a Renaissance and then of a Counter-Renaissance. But while two categories may be more acceptable than one, the thesis depends on leaving the so-called backward-looking "Classicists" in the "Renaissance" and placing the reforming "Romanticists" in the "Counter-Renaissance," Calvin and Machiavelli lying side by side in the counter camp. And...