Gregory Sanders

First published in 1903, this book is an edition by James Herbert Srawley of the Oratio Catechetica by Gregory of Nyssa. Collating the texts of numerous manuscripts - many of which had not been used to produce an edition before - Srawley's edition was designed to assist students in placing Gregory's treatise in its proper historical setting. The text is given in Greek, with extensive notes in English clarifying particular words and phrases and contextualizing the work. In addition to the notes, Srawley also offers an English introduction to the work, discussing its character, date, authenticity, and literary history, and placing it in the context of Gregory's wider teaching.

Dr Sanders' book grew out of uneasiness over commonly accepted ways of talking about Elizabethan literature. Phrases like 'world picture', 'received ideas' are so easily used that we bypass important questions: A picture of whose word? Ideas received by whom? and in what way? The heart of Dr Sanders' book is a critical account of seven plays by Marlowe and Shakespeare (The Massacre at Paris, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, Dr Faustus, Richard II, Richard III and Macbeth). In his examination, Dr Sanders is at pains to analyse the nature of the intellectual and cultural environment in which the plays were written, to define the ways in which this environment influenced Marlowe and Shakespeare and thus to come to a full understanding of the manner in which a work of art can be simultaneously 'of an age' and 'for all time'.