Excerpt from Verse Satire in England Before the Renaissance The difficulties under which the work has been done have been considerable. There are no satisfactory terminology or criteria that might serve as a basis for the treatment Of the Satire as a genre. Such terminology and criteria Chapter I of this book attempts to establish. Again, the very subject matter with which the author has had to deal was found chaotic and widely distributed, some Of it hardly accessible. An effort has been made to render this confused mass in some degree more coherent and Significant. The amount Of critical work on the Satire and on satirical literature in general, in the Shape Of books, essays, magazine articles, etc., is enormous. Yet, either through their merely popular character, their restricted point of view, or their desul tory method, the vast majority Of these studies was found un suited to the purpose of the present work. Furthermore, no treatment Of the evolution Of the Satire as a genre in English has yet been attempted. Professor Alden's book, to which I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness, is an able and scholarly treatment Of one period - that of the Elizabethan Satire. The present study in some measure leads up to Professor Alden's work, Since it essays to trace the development Of satirical verse in England from its beginnings down to the close of its first period, in I 540. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.