SOURCE: Wilson, Kenneth J. “Roger Ascham: Ciceronian Archery.” In Incomplete Fictions: The Formations of English Renaissance Dialogue, pp. 109-35. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1985.

In the following essay, a revised version of an article originally published in 1976, Wilson discusses the connection between Ascham's prose style and his subject and themes—not merely archery but also knowledge, learning, order, and perfection. Wilson sees in Ascham's work an example of the humanist love for learning par excellence, for the realization of knowledge in the practical application of it.

I

Roger Ascham's dialogue Toxophilus is a book made of books. Ascham himself indicated the importance of classical sources to his “schole of shootinge” by providing an apparatus of marginal references in Toxophilus.¹ In its substance his dialogue of expert knowledge envisioned the old learning, drawing upon its forms in a new imaginative style. It is remarkable that for...