Abstract
Davenant’s philosophical interest is explicit and implicit in his work. Disraeli’s romantic praise of him as “a poet and and a wit... and at all times a philosopher” (Disraeli 1859, p. 404) signals the two-sided appreciation that has been extended and complicated by later intellectual historians and critics. Primarily a literary figure, Davenant helped theorize the emergence of a logically clarified, empirically chastened neoclassicism in opposition to what his friend Thomas Hobbes called the “ambitious obscurity” of late Renaissance aesthetics. Active during an era of political upheaval, Davenant emphasized rationalized order and conservative, royalist loyalties; nonetheless, recent scrutiny has been devoted to the contradictions and ambivalences within his explicit themes and methods.
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Levao, R. (2015). Davenant, William. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_480-1
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