XLV. Thomas Deloney's Euphuistic Learning and The Forest

Abstract

Thomas Deloney's four novels are generally praised for their vigor of style and their realism. Indeed, his modern editor, Mr. F. O. Mann, in singling out for commendation “his faithful and sympathetic rendering of commonplace human life,” insists that in Deloney is to be found “the highest achievement of the Elizabethan novel.” Not infrequently, however, Deloney's “commonplace human life” yields to high-flown and altogether improbable romances of earls and ladies, princes and princesses, kings and queens, just as his ordinary familiar prose style at times is embellished with all the euphuistic tricks he was capable of imitating. In particular his apparently casual references to strange birds, queer beasts, and other wonders of nature and to historical and mythological characters give a surprising air of learning; and the notes of his various editors suggest that he was acquainted with such authors as Boccaccio, Belieforest, Pliny, Sextus Empiricus, and Cornelius Nepos.