Though British history and identity in the early modern period are intensively researched areas, the role of literature in the construction of 'Britishness' is under-examined. English history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often overlooks the contribution of Ireland, Scotland and Wales to the formation of the British state. Historians describe 'Britain' as a multiple kingdom, with a long history of conflict. In this 2002 volume, a team of leading Renaissance literary critics read a broad range of texts from the period, including plays of Shakespeare, in light of British history. Prominent historians respond to the issues raised by the volume. This collection opened up a different kind of literary history and has pressing relevance for discussions of 'Britishness'.

In this revised and greatly expanded edition of theCompanion, 80 scholars come together to offer an originaland far-reaching assessment of English Renaissance literature andculture. A new edition of the best-selling Companion to EnglishRenaissance Literature, revised and updated, with 22 newessays and 19 new illustrations Contributions from some 80 scholars including Judith H.Anderson, Patrick Collinson, Alison Findlay, Germaine Greer,Malcolm Jones, Arthur Kinney, James Knowles, Arthur Marotti, RobertMiola and Greg Walker Unrivalled in scope and its exploration of unfamiliar literaryand cultural territories the Companion offers new readingsof both ‘literary’ and ‘non-literary’texts Features essays discussing material culture, sectarian writing,the history of the body, theatre both in and outside theplayhouses, law, gardens, and ecology in early modern England Orientates the beginning student, while providing advancedstudents and faculty with new directions for theirresearch All of the essays from the first edition, along with therecommendations for further reading, have been reworked orupdated

The most comprehensive collection of essays on Renaissance poetry on the market Covering the period 1520–1680, A Companion to Renaissance Poetry offers 46 essays which present an in-depth account of the context, production, and interpretation of early modern British poetry. It provides students with a deep appreciation for, and sensitivity toward, the ways in which poets of the period understood and fashioned a distinctly vernacular voice, while engaging them with some of the debates and departures that are currently animating the discipline. A Companion to Renaissance Poetry analyzes the historical, cultural, political, and religious background of the time, addressing issues such as education, translation, the Reformation, theorizations of poetry, and more. The book immerses readers in non-dramatic poetry from Wyatt to Milton, focusing on the key poetic genres—epic, lyric, complaint, elegy, epistle, pastoral, satire, and religious poetry. It also offers an inclusive account of the poetic production of the period by canonical and less canonical writers, female and male. Finally, it offers examples of current developments in the interpretation of Renaissance poetry, including economic, ecological, scientific, materialist, and formalist approaches. • Covers a wide selection of authors and texts • Features contributions from notable authors, scholars, and critics across the globe • Offers a substantial section on recent and developing approaches to reading Renaissance poetry A Companion to Renaissance Poetry is an ideal resource for all students and scholars of the literature and culture of the Renaissance period.

Region, Religion and English Renaissance Literature brings together leading scholars of early modern literature and culture to explicate the ways in which both regional and religious contexts inform the production, circulation and interpretation of Renaissance literary texts. Examining texts by a wide variety of early modern writers - including Edmund Spenser, Lodowick Lloyd, Richard Nugent, Thomas Middleton and John Webster, Richard Montagu, and John Milton - the contributors to this volume enhance our understanding of the complex cultural contexts of early modern Anglophone writing.

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Provides a detailed map of contemporary critical theory in Renaissance and Early Modern English literary studies beyond Shakespeare A Handbook of English Renaissance Literary Studies is a groundbreaking guide to the contemporary engagement with critical theory within the larger disciplinary area of Renaissance and Early Modern studies. Comprising commissioned contributions from leading international scholars, it provides an overview of literary theory, beyond Shakespeare, focusing on most major figures, as well as some lesser-known writers of the period. This book represents an important first step in bridging the divide between the abundance of titles which explore applications of theory in Shakespeare studies, and the relative lack of such texts concerning English Literary Renaissance studies as a whole, which includes major figures such as Marlowe, Jonson, Donne, and Milton. The tripartite structure offers a map of the critical landscape so that students can appreciate the breadth of the work being done, along with an exploration of the ways in which the treatments of or approaches to key issues have changed over time. Handbook of English Renaissance Literary Studies is must-reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of early modern and Renaissance English literature, as well as their instructors and advisors. Divided into three main sections, “Conditions of Subjectivity,” “Spaces, Places, and Forms,” and “Practices and Theories,” A Handbook of English Renaissance Literary Studies: Provides an overview of theoretical work and the theoretical-informed competencies which are central to the teaching of English Renaissance literary studies beyond Shakespeare Provides a map of the critical landscape of the field to provide students with an opportunity to appreciate the breadth of the work done Features newly-commissioned essays in representative subject areas to offer a clear picture of the contemporary theoretically-engaged work in the field Explores the ways in which the treatments of or approaches to key issues have changed over time Offers examples of the ways in which the practice of a theoretically-engaged criticism may enrich the personal and professional lives of critics, and the culture in which such critical practice takes place

This book examines the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century engagement with a crucial part of Britain's past, the period between the withdrawal of the Roman legions and the Norman Conquest. A number of early modern plays suggest an underlying continuity, an essential English identity linked to the land and impervious to change. This book considers the extent to which ideas about early modern English and British national, religious, and political identities were rooted in cultural constructions of the pre-Conquest past.

The Tudor era has long been associated with the rise of nationalism in England, yet nationalist writing in this period often involved the denigration and outright denial of Englishness. Philip Schwyzer argues that the ancient, insular, and imperial nation imagined in the works of writers such as Shakespeare and Spenser was not England, but Britain. Disclaiming their Anglo-Saxon ancestry, the English sought their origins in a nostalgic vision of British antiquity. Focusing on texts including The Faerie Queene, English and Welsh antiquarian works, The Mirror for Magistrates, Henry V and King Lear, Schwyzer charts the genesis, development and disintegration of British nationalism in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. An important contribution to the expanding scholarship on early modern Britishness, this study gives detailed attention to Welsh texts and traditions, arguing that Welsh sources crucially influenced the development of English literature and identity.

Applying current political theory on nationhood as well as methods established by recent performance studies, this study sheds new light on the role the public theatre played in the rise of English national identity around 1600. It situates selected history plays by Shakespeare and Marlowe in the context of non-fictional texts (such as historiographies, chorographies, political treatises, or dictionary entries) and cultural artefacts (such as maps or portraits), and thus highlights the circulation, and mutation, of national thought in late sixteenth-century culture. At the same time, it goes beyond a New Historicist approach by foregrounding the performative surplus of the theatre event that is so essential for the shaping of collective identity. How, this study crucially asks, does the performative art of theatre contribute to the dynamics of the formation of national identity? Although theories about the nature of nationalism vary, a majority of theorists agree that notions of a shared territory and history, as well as questions of religion, class and gender play crucial roles in the shaping of national identity. These factors inform the structure of this book, and each is examined individually. In contrast to existing publications, this inquiry does not take for granted a pre-existing national identity that simply manifested itself in the literary works of the period; nor does it proceed from preconceived notions of the playwrights’ political views. Instead, it understands the early modern stage as an essentially contested space in which conflicting political positions are played off against each other, and it inquires into how the imaginative work of negotiating these stances eventually contributed to a rising national self-awareness in the spectators.

Contributors to this collection delve into the relationship between Rome and Shakespeare. They view the presence of Rome in Shakespeare's plays not simply as an unquestioned model of imperial culture, or a routine chapter in the history of literary influence, but rather as the problematic link with a distant and foreign ancestry which is both revered and ravaged in its translation into the terms of the Bard's own cultural moment. During a time when England was engaged in constructing a rhetoric of imperial nationhood, the contributors demonstrate that Englishmen used Roman history and the classical heritage to mediate a complex range of issues, from notions of cultural identity and gender to the representation of systems of exchange with Otherness in the expanding ethnic space of the nation. This volume addresses matters of concern not only for Shakespeare scholars but also for students interested in issues connected with gender, postcolonialism and globalization. Drawing implicitly or explicitly on recent criticism (intertextual studies, postcolonial theory, Derrida's conceptualization of hospitality, gender studies, global studies) the essayists explore how the Roman Shakespeare of an emerging early modern empire asks questions of our present as well as of our past.