Download or read book British Identities and English Renaissance Literature written by David J. Baker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-16 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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'.
Download or read book Nation State and Empire in English Renaissance Literature written by Willy Maley and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-11-25 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, original in emphasis, daring in execution, maps out the shaping power of English Renaissance literature in creating and contesting national and colonial identities through the work of major canonical authors including Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton. Informed throughout by the burgeoning fields of the new British history and postcolonial criticism, this volume marks a dramatic shift in studies of the early modern period, from Irish to British concerns, thus accounting for the interplay of union, plantation, and conquest.
Download or read book The English Renaissance written by Alistair Fox and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1997-11-06 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reassesses Renaissance English literature and its place in Elizabethan society. It examines, in particular, the role of Italianate literary imitation in addressing the ethical and political issues of the sixteenth century.
Download or read book Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature written by Philip Schwyzer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern English literature abounds with archaeological images, from open graves to ruined monasteries. Schwyzer demonstrates that archaeology can shed light on literary texts including works by Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne. The book also explores the kinship between two disciplines distinguished by their intimacy with the traces of past life.
Download or read book English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama written by Mary Floyd-Wilson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-20 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Download or read book Region Religion and English Renaissance Literature written by David Coleman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Nationalism and Historical Loss in Renaissance England written by Andrew Escobedo and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew Escobedo here seeks to provide a new understanding of the emergence of national consciousness in England, showing that many Renaissance writers articulated their Englishness temporally, through an engagement with a history they perceived as lost or alienated. According to Escobedo, the English experienced nationalism as a form of community that disrupted earlier religious and social identities, making it difficult to link the national present to the medieval past. Furthermore, he argues, the English faced the nation's temporal isolation before the Enlightenment narrative of historical progress emerged as a means to interpret novelty in a positive light. Escobedo examines how John Foxe, John Dee, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton used narrative representations of nationhood to mediate what they perceived as a troubling breach in history, attempting to bring together the English past, present, and near future in a complete and continuous story. Yet all four authors also register their concern that historical loss may be an inevitable feature of a "modern" England, and they come to see their narratives as long tapestries that spontaneously rip apart as they grow, obliging the weaver to return to repair them. Focusing on Renaissance England's perplexing sense of its time-boundedness, Escobedo presents early national consciousness as stranded awkwardly between the premodern and modern.
Download or read book Law and Empire in English Renaissance Literature written by Brian C. Lockey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-31 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern literature played a key role in the formation of the legal justification for imperialism. As the English colonial enterprise developed, the existing legal tradition of common law no longer solved the moral dilemmas of the new world order, in which England had become, instead of a victim of Catholic enemies, an aggressive force with its own overseas territories. Writers of romance fiction employed narrative strategies in order to resolve this difficulty and, in the process, provided a legal basis for English imperialism. Brian Lockey analyses works by such authors as Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney in the light of these legal discourses, and uncovers new contexts for the genre of romance. Scholars of early modern literature, as well as those interested in the history of law as the British Empire emerged, will learn much from this insightful and ambitious study.
Download or read book This England That Shakespeare written by Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Shakespeare English, British, neither or both? Addressing from various angles the relation of the figure of the national poet/dramatist to constructions of England and Englishness this collection of essays probes the complex issues raised by this question, first through explorations of his plays, principally though not exclusively the histories (Part One), then through discussion of a range of subsequent appropriations and reorientations of Shakespeare and 'his' England (Part Two). If Shakespeare has been taken to stand for Britain as well as England, as if the two were interchangeable, this double identity has come under increasing strain with the break-up - or shake-up - of Britain through devolution and the end of Empire. Essays in Part One examine how the fissure between English and British identities is probed in Shakespeare's own work, which straddles a vital juncture when an England newly independent from Rome was negotiating its place as part of an emerging British state and empire. Essays in Part Two then explore the vexed relations of 'Shakespeare' to constructions of authorial identity as well as national, class, gender and ethnic identities. At this crucial historical moment, between the restless interrogations of the tercentenary celebrations of the Union of Scotland and England in 2007 and the quatercentenary celebrations of the death of the bard in 2016, amid an increasing clamour for a separate English parliament, when the end of Britain is being foretold and when flags and feelings are running high, this collection has a topicality that makes it of interest not only to students and scholars of Shakespeare studies and Renaissance literature, but to readers inside and outside the academy interested in the drama of national identities in a time of transition.
Download or read book A Handbook of English Renaissance Literary Studies written by John Lee and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Reading the Nation in English Literature written by Elizabeth Sauer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains primary materials and introductory essays on the historical, critical and theoretical study of "national literature", focusing on the years 1550 – 1850 and the impact of ideas of nationhood from this period on contemporary literature and culture. The book is helpfully divided into three comprehensive parts. Part One contains a selection of primary materials from various English-speaking nations, written between the early modern and the early Victorian eras. These include political essays, poetry, religious writing, and literary theory by major authors and thinkers ranging from Edmund Spenser, Anne Bradstreet and David Hume to Adam Kidd and Peter Du Ponceau. Parts Two and Three contain critical essays by leading scholars in the field: Part Two introduces and contextualizes the primary material and Part Three brings the discussion up-to-date by discussing its impact on contemporary issues such as canon-formation and globalization. The volume is prefaced by an extensive introduction to and overview of recent studies in nationalism, the history and debates of nationalism through major literary periods and discussion of why the question of nationhood is important. Reading the Nation in English is a comprehensive resource, offering coherent, accessible readings on the ideologies, discourses and practices of nationhood. Contributors: Terence N. Bowers, Andrea Cabajsky, Sarah Corse, Andrew Escobedo, Andrew Hadfield, Deborah Madsen, Elizabeth Sauer, Imre Szeman, Julia M. Wright.
Download or read book Representing the English Renaissance written by Stephen Greenblatt and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An exciting collection of essays on English Renaissance literature and culture, this book contributes substantially to the contemporary renaissance in historical modes of critical inquiry."--Margaret W. Ferguson, Columbia University "An exciting collection of essays on English Renaissance literature and culture, this book contributes substantially to the contemporary renaissance in historical modes of critical inquiry."--Margaret W. Ferguson, Columbia University
Download or read book Literature Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales written by Philip Schwyzer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-21 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Archipelagic Identities written by Simon Mealor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archipelagic Identities explores the invention and interplay of national, regional and linguistic identities in the literatures of early modern Britain and Ireland. The volume includes innovative work by leading practitioners of British studies, and sheds new light on classic cases such as Edmund Spenser's Irish experience, whilst also introducing less familiar writers and texts, such as Anne Dowriche's The French Historie, William Browne's Britannia Pastorals, William Richards' Wallography, Anne Bradstreet's 'Dialogue between Old England and New', and the works of Gaelic bards and French Huguenot refugees. Foregrounding issues of gender, class and migratory identity which have not previously received significant attention in this field, Archipelagic Identities brings British studies into the mainstream of contemporary literary criticism.
Download or read book Early Modern Catholics Royalists and Cosmopolitans written by Brian C. Lockey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans considers how the marginalized perspective of 16th-century English Catholic exiles and 17th-century English royalist exiles helped to generate a form of cosmopolitanism that was rooted in contemporary religious and national identities but also transcended those identities. Author Brian C. Lockey argues that English discourses of nationhood were in conversation with two opposing 'cosmopolitan' perspectives, one that sought to cultivate and sustain the emerging English nationalism and imperialism and another that challenged English nationhood from the perspective of those Englishmen who viewed the kingdom as one province within the larger transnational Christian commonwealth. Lockey illustrates how the latter cosmopolitan perspective, produced within two communities of exiled English subjects, separated in time by half a century, influenced fiction writers such as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Anthony Munday, Sir John Harington, John Milton, and Aphra Behn. Ultimately, he shows that early modern cosmopolitans critiqued the emerging discourse of English nationhood from a traditional religious and political perspective, even as their writings eventually gave rise to later secular Enlightenment forms of cosmopolitanism.
Download or read book Identity Otherness and Empire in Shakespeare s Rome written by Maria Del Sapio Garbero and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Representing Place in British Literature and Culture 1660 1830 written by Evan Gottlieb and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revising traditional 'rise of the nation-state' narratives, this collection explores the development of and interactions among various forms of local, national, and transnational identities and affiliations during the long eighteenth century. By treating place as historically contingent and socially constructed, this volume examines how Britons experienced and related to a landscape altered by agricultural and industrial modernization, political and religious reform, migration, and the building of nascent overseas empires. In mapping the literary and cultural geographies of the long eighteenth century, the volume poses three challenges to common critical assumptions about the relationships among genre, place, and periodization. First, it questions the novel’s exclusive hold on the imagining of national communities by examining how poetry, drama, travel-writing, and various forms of prose fiction each negotiated the relationships between the local, national, and global in distinct ways. Second, it demonstrates how viewing the literature and culture of the long eighteenth century through a broadly conceived lens of place brings to the foreground authors typically considered 'minor' when seen through more traditional aesthetic, cultural, or theoretical optics. Finally, it contextualizes Romanticism’s long-standing associations with the local and the particular, suggesting that literary localism did not originate in the Romantic era, but instead emerged from previous literary and cultural explorations of space and place. Taken together, the essays work to displace the nation-state as a central category of literary and cultural analysis in eighteenth-century studies.
