Title: Ben Jonson
Description: Using annotated architectural volumes surviving from Jonson's library as well as his published works, A.W. Johnson surveys the evidence for Jonson's knowledge of, and theoretical agreement with, the architectural principles enunciated in the De architectura libri decem of the Roman architect Vitruvius.

He goes on to examine Jonson's encomiastic poetry and the early masques in the light of the latter's interest in architecture, finding in them centred and harmonically proportioned forms which suggest a much closer proximity between Jonson's and Inigo Jones's aesthetic in the early years of the Jacobean period than has formerly been supposed.

This original and ambitious study argues that Jonson employed a form of literary Vitruvianism which was a potent force in the shaping of the early masques of his Catholic period, and was to remain an active influence on poetic composition throughout the succeeding century.
Subjects: Architecture, Architecture and literature, British Aesthetics, English literature, History, Influence, Italian influences, Knowledge, Modern Aesthetics, Poetics, Jonson, ben, 1573-1637, Aesthetics, modern, Aesthetics, british, English literature, foreign influences, Rhetoric, 1500-1800, Knowledge and learning, Rhetoric, Early works to 1800
People: Ben Jonson (1573?-1637), Vitruvius Pollio
Time periods: 17th century