The period from the Reformation to the English Civil War saw an evolving understanding of social identity in England. This book uses four illuminating case studies to chart a shift from mid-sixteenth-century notions of an individually generated, spiritually motivated self, to civil war perceptions of the self as a site of civil control. Each centers on the work of an early modern woman writer in the act of self-definition and authorization, illustrating the evolving relationships between public and private selves and the increasing role of gender in determining different identities for men...

This persuasive book describes the complex, often violent connections between body and voice in Ovid's Metamorphoses and narrative, lyric and dramatic works by Petrarch, Marston and Shakespeare. Lynn Enterline analyzes what happens when Renaissance authors revisit Ovid's stories of violence and desire, paying close attention to the ways in which his subversive representations of gender, sexuality and the body influence later conceptions of the self and erotic life. This vividly original book makes a profound contribution to the study of Ovid's presence in Renaissance literature.

This book reexamines some of Shakespeare's best-known texts in the light of their engagement with the forms of deprivation that threatened domestic security in early modern England. Burglary, the loss of home, and the early deaths of parents emerge as central and very telling issues in Shakespearean drama. Dubrow relates the plays to Shakespeare's poetry (The Rape of Lucrece and the sonnets), and to early modern cultural texts such as the literature of roguery; she also introduces illuminating perspectives from contemporary social problems (notably crime), twentieth-century poetry, and...

This innovative study examines emotional responses to socio-economic pressures in early modern England, as they are revealed in plays, historical narratives and biographical accounts of the period. These texts yield fascinating insights into the various, often unpredictable, ways in which people coped with the exigencies of credit, debt, mortgaging and capital ventures. Leinwand discusses plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Heywood and Massinger, pairing them with writings about the finances of royalty and aristocrats, privateers, theatrical entrepreneurs and debtors.

This volume examines early Anglo-Indian relations through trade (with the establishment of the East India Company), tourism, and diplomacy and reveals important differences between traveller reports and the representations of London's press and stage. Richmond Barbour looks closely at exotic visions of "the East," as staged in the playhouses, at court, and on the streets of Shakespeare's London. He follows the efforts of the newly established East India Company, and the careers of England's first tourist and first ambassador in India, Thomas Coryate and Sir Thomas Roe.

This valuable study illuminates the idea of nobility as display, as public performance, in Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature and society. Through detailed readings of major authors, including Castiglione, Montaigne, Bacon and Corneille, David Posner examines the tensions between literary or imaginative representations of "nobility," and the increasingly problematic historical position of the nobility themselves. Situated at the intersection of rhetorical and historical theories of interpretation, this book contributes significantly to our understanding of how literature can both...

Michael Schoenfeldt's fascinating study explores the close relationship between selves and bodies, psychological inwardness and corporeal processes, as they are represented in English Renaissance literature. After Galen, the predominant medical paradigm of the period envisaged a self governed by humors, literally embodying inner emotion by locating and explaining human passion within a taxonomy of internal organs and fluids. It thus gave a profoundly material emphasis to behavioral phenomena, giving the poets of the period a vital and compelling vocabulary for describing the ways in which...

This original study examines how Shakespeare and his contemporaries made the difficult transition from writing plays for the theater to publishing them as literary works. Douglas Brooks analyzes how and why certain plays found their way into print while many others failed to do so and looks at the role played by the Renaissance book trade in shaping literary reputations. Incorporating many finely-observed typographical illustrations, this book focuses on plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Webster, and Beaumont and Fletcher as well as reviewing the complicated publication history of Thomas...

Wendy Wall argues that representations of housework in the early modern period helped to forge conceptions of national identity. With a detailed account of household practices, this study interprets plays on the London stage in reference to the first printed cookbooks in England. Working from original historical sources, Wall reveals that domesticity was represented as "familiar" as well as "exotic." She analyzes a wide range of plays including some now little-known as well as key works of the early modern period.

This book analyzes the discourses and practices that defined Renaissance theater, as related to the development of encyclopedic texts and vice versa. Looking at what "theater" meant to medieval and Renaissance writers and critics, William West sets Renaissance drama within one of its cultural and intellectual contexts. Although the study focuses on the Renaissance, it also draws on and analyzes substantial classical and medieval material. It is of equal interest to intellectual historians, theater historians and students of early literature.