James Doelman's book is the first major study on the Renaissance English epigram since 1947. It combines thorough description of the genre's history and conventions with consideration of the rootedness of individual epigrams within specific social, political and religious contexts.

While among the most common of Renaissance genres, the epigram has been largely neglected by scholars and critics: James Doelman's book is the first major study on the Renaissance English epigram since 1947. It combines thorough description of the genre's history and conventions with consideration of the rootedness of individual epigrams within specific social, political and religious contexts. The book explores questions of libel, censorship and patronage associated with the genre, and includes chapters on the sub-genres of the religious epigram, political epigram and mock epitaph. It balances discussion of canonical figures such as Ben Jonson and Sir John Harington with a wide range of lesser known poets, drawing on both manuscript and print sources. In its breadth The epigram in England serves as a foundational introduction to the genre for students, and through its detailed case studies it offers rich analysis for advanced scholars.

This study examines the transmission and compilation of poetic texts through manuscripts from the late-Elizabethan era through the mid-seventeenth century, paying attention to the distinctive material, social, and literary features of these documents. The study has two main focuses: the first, the particular social environments in which texts were compiled and, second, the presence within this system of a large body of (usually anonymous) rare or unique poems. Manuscripts from aristocratic, academic, and urban professional environments are examined in separate chapters that highlight particular collections. Two chapters consider the social networking within the university and London that facilitated the transmission within these environments and between them. Although the topic is addressed throughout the study, the place of rare or unique poems in manuscript collections is at the center of the final three chapters. The book as a whole argues that scholars need to pay more attention to the social life of texts in the period and to little-known or unknown rare or unique poems that represent a field of writing broader than that defined in a literary history based mainly on the products of print culture.

This volume offers a wide range of sample passages from literature written in Latin in the British Isles during the period from about 1500 to 1800. It includes a general introduction to and bibliography to the Latin literature of these centuries, as well as Latin texts with English translations, introductions and notes. These texts present a rich panorama of the different literary genres, styles and themes flourishing at the time, illustrating the role of Latin texts in the development of literary genres, the diversity of authors writing in Latin in early modern Britain, and the importance of Latin in contemporary political, religious and scientific debates. The collection, which includes both texts by well-known authors (such as John Milton, Thomas More and George Buchanan) and previously unpublished items, can be used as a point of entry for students at school and university level, but will also be of interest to specialists in a number of academic disciplines.

An in-depth look at British–Polish literary pre-Enlightenment contacts, The Call of Albion explores how the reverberations of British religious upheavals in distant Poland–Lithuania surprisingly served to strengthen the impact of English, Scottish, and Welsh works on Polish literature. The book argues that Jesuits played a key role in that process. The book provides an insightful account of how the transmission, translation, and recontextualization of key publications by British Protestants and Catholics served Calvinist and Jesuit agendas, while occasionally bypassing barriers between confessionally defined textual communities and inspiring Polish–Lithuanian political thought, as well as literary tastes.

Victoria Moul's groundbreaking study uncovers one of the most important features of early modern English poetry: its bilingualism. The first guide to a forgotten literary landscape, this book considers the vast quantities of poetry that were written and read in both Latin and English from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Introducing readers to a host of new authors and drawing on hundreds of manuscript as well as print sources, it also reinterprets a series of landmarks in English poetry within a bilingual literary context. Ranging from Tottel's miscellany to the hymns of Isaac Watts, via Shakespeare, Jonson, Herbert, Marvell, Milton and Cowley, this revelatory survey shows how the forms and fashions of contemporary Latin verse informed key developments in English poetry. As the complex, highly creative interactions between the two languages are revealed, the work reshapes our understanding of what 'English' literary history means.

The studies gathered in this volume engage in different ways with the ideas of André Jolles (1874–1946), whose Einfache Formen (“Simple Forms”) was first published in 1930. Trained as an anthropologist, Jolles argued that these “simple” forms – Legende (legend), Sage (saga), Mythe (myth), Rätsel (riddle), Spruch (proverb), Kasus (case), Memorabile (memorable action), Märchen (folk or fairy tale) and Witz (joke or witticism) – which had circulated at a very early stage of human culture underlay the more sophisticated genres of literature. Unlike epic or tragedy, many of the simple forms are not theorised in classical rhetoric. The essays presented here focus on their reception in Hispanic culture from the Middle Ages to circa 1650. As such, the book will be of interest to scholars of medieval and early modern Spanish, Catalan and Latin literature. It will also appeal to historians of Humanism as well as scholars working on classical and Renaissance literary theory.

When Cowley died, he was the most famous poet in England. His popularity continued throughout the eighteenth century. Yet Cowley has virtually disappeared from the canon today, even from metaphysical poetry collections, although it was Cowley who occasioned Samuel Johnson’s famous definition of metaphysical poetry. This book considers the circumstances behind Cowley’s falling out of the canon and what he might offer future generations of readers discovering his poetry anew.

The first comprehensive history of libels in Elizabethan England, this interdisciplinary study traces the crime across law, literature, and culture, focusing especially on the theater. Ranging from Shakespeare to provincial pageantry, it provides a fresh account of early modern drama and the viral media ecosystem springing up around it.

The early Stuart funeral elegy was a copious and digressive genre, and exceptional deaths pressed elegists to stretch beyond the usual rhetoric of grief and commemoration. This book engages in a broad reading of the period’s rich trove of funeral elegies, in both manuscript and print, and by poets ranging from the canonical to the anonymous. The book stands apart from earlier studies by its greater focus upon the subjects of funeral elegies (rather than the poets), and how the particular circumstances of death and the immediate contexts affected the poetic response. Individual deaths are understood in relation to each other and other prominent events of the time. While the book covers the period 1603 to 1640, the 1620s stand out as a tumultuous decade in which the genre most fully engaged in matters of political controversy and satire.