Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose

The full study of Bacon as a writer, Dr Vickers takes into account the whole corpus of Bacon’s work, in Latin as well as in English. His chief sources are the The Advancement of Learning and the Essays. His purpose is to reinstate Bacon as one of the supreme masters of English prose in a period which made rich use of all the expressive resources of the medium. The study is both analytical and historical: it isolates the major features of Bacon’s style, and sets them in the context of Renaissance theory and practice. The features include the overall structure of Bacon’s works, his important concept of the aphorism, and his use of the traditional patterns of syntax. Dr Vickers makes a challenging reassessment of the accepted view of Bacon as a ‘Senecan’ or ‘anti-Ciceronian’ prose writer. Particular attention is paid to imagery, in which Bacon’s powers as an imaginative writer are greatest. There are two general chapters, the first being the problem of analysing style, the last on reactions to Bacon’s style since the seventeenth century. This book also provides the basis for a fresh assessment of Renaissance prose.