“In this terrific and wide-ranging book, Rachel Eisendrath provides a nuanced account of Renaissance defenses of aesthetic pleasure that challenges the traditional association of the early modern period with new scientific notions of objectivity. At the same time, she makes a powerful contribution to contemporary debates in the humanities about 'distant reading,' 'surface reading,' 'the new materialism,' and 'thing theory,' in the process reasserting the traditional virtues of humanistic education. Poetry in a World of Things is an exceptionally well-informed, theoretically sophisticated, and beautifully written work.” –Victoria Kahn, University of California, Berkeley
— Victoria Kahn, University of California, Berkeley
"Why do we value critical objectivity? This is the basic question of Eisendrath’s book, a study of some early encounters between art and empiricism, and of the literary strategies by which a poem or a painting might save itself from mere objecthood. Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare are its heroes, but it is just as much a book for our times, a beautifully written tutorial in how to tell the difference between a work and a thing, and why that difference matters."
— Jeff Dolven, Princeton University
"...Eisendrath convincingly demonstrates the importance, complexity, and ongoing fascination of early modern ekphrasis."
— Renaissance Quarterly
"Rachel Eisendrath's elegant and learned Poetry in a World of Things: Aesthetics and Empiricism in Renaissance Ekphrasis is the perfect study for these times... There is much to admire about this book. Its style is distinctive, never self-effacing, and often arresting."
— Genre