Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- Introduction: Problems of Paradoxes -- Part I. Rhetorical and Psychological Paradoxes -- 1. "The Puny Rhypographer": François Rabelais and His Book -- 2. "Pity the Tale of Me": Logos and Art's Eternity -- 3. John Donne and the Paradoxes of Incarnation -- Part II. Paradoxes in Divine Ontology -- 4. Affirmations in the Negative Theology: the Infinite -- 5. Affirmations in the Negative Theology: Eternity -- 6. Logos in The Temple -- Part III. Ontological Paradoxes: Being and Becoming -- 7. "Nothing is but what is not": Solutions to the Problem of Nothing -- 8. Le pari: All or Nothing -- 9. Still Life: Paradoxes of Being -- 10. Being and Becoming: Paradoxes in the Language of Things -- 11. Being and Becoming in The Faerie Queene -- Part IV. Epistemological Paradoxes -- 12. "I am that I am": Problems of Self-Reference -- 13. The Rhetoric of Transcendent Know ledge -- 14. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and the Structure of Paradox -- 15. "Reason in Madness" -- 16. "Mine own Executioner" -- Epilogue -- Bibliography -- Index
Paradoxia Epidemica is a broad-ranging critical study of Renaissance thought, showing how the greatest writers of the period from Erasmus and Rabelais to Donne, Milton, and Shakespeare made conscious use of paradox not only as a figure of speech but as a mode of thought, a way of perceiving the universe, God, nature, and man himself. The book consists of an introduction (historical and topological) and sixteen chapters grouped according to broad types of paradox: rhetorical, theological, ontological, epistemological. Within this framework the author interprets individual writings or art forms as parts of a rich tradition.Originally published in 1966.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.