Shakespeare, the Renaissance and Empire presents Shakespeare as both a local and global writer, investigating Shakespeare's trans-cultural writing through the interrelations and interactions of binaries including theory and practice, past and present, aesthetics and ethics, freedom and tyranny, republic and empire, empires and colonies, poetry and history, rhetoric and poetics, England and America, and England and Asia. The book breaks away from traditional western-centric analysis to present a universal Shakespeare, exposing readers to the relevance and significance of Shakespeare within their local contexts and cultures. This text aims to present a global Shakespeare, utilizing a dual perspective or dialectical presentation, mainly centred on questions of (1) how Shakespeare can be viewed as both an English writer and a world writer; (2) how language operates across genres and kinds of discourse; and (3) how Shakespeare helps to articulate a poetics of both texts (literature) and contexts (cultures). The book's originality lies in its articulation of the importance and value of Shakespeare in the emerging landscape of global culture.

Originally published in 1915, the essays in this book deal with 9 English writers - as diverse in outlook and temperament as Bunyan and Boswell; poets and Puritans and men who were neither. The book examines each writer in his historical and social context - facing problems in art or religion and life in general.

First published in 1989, Henry Fielding is a biography presenting a fresh interpretation of Fielding's life and thought. Using newly discovered information, including new facts, three hitherto unknown pictures of Fielding drawn from life, documents, manuscripts, and many crucially important and engrossing new letters, Martin C. Battestin - the foremost Fielding scholar - illuminates every aspect of Fielding's life and work. Fielding and the life he led - in the West Country, at Eton, at the University of Leyden, and in the theatres and brothels, sponging houses and police courts of London - make for fascinating reading. This authoritative and timely biography will appeal to all those interested in the society and literature of eighteenth-century England.

This study examines the work of three fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French poets. It focuses on developments in the presentation of their poetry. As printed books came to replace manuscripts, features such as layout and illustration evolved. These changes reflect shifts in literary style and technique, under the influence of printing.

This bibliography by the distinguished Johnson scholar, the late J. D. Fleeman, records Johnson's literary output in chronological order, illuminating not only his multifarious writings but also the development of his career and reputation as a professional writer. It reveals the range of his work and the variety of his anonymous contributions (some of them first identified by Fleeman) to newspapers, magazines, and books by other writers. Detailed analysis of the works examined sheds light on the practices of the 18th-century book trade, and identifies editions, early and late, many of which are valuable and unjustly neglected. The bibliography also lists new editions up to 1984, the bicentenary of Johnson's death, charting the course of his posthumous literary reputation.

Self-reflection, as the hallmark of the modern age, originates more profoundly with Dante than with Descartes. This book rewrites modern intellectual history, taking Dante's lyrical language in Paradiso as enacting a Trinitarian self-reflexivity that gives a theological spin to the birth of the modern subject already with the Troubadours. The ever more intense self-reflexivity that has led to our contemporary secular world and its technological apocalypse can lead also to the poetic vision of other worlds such as those experienced by Dante. Facing the same nominalist crisis as Duns Scotus, his exact contemporary and the precursor of scientific method, Dante's thought and work indicate an alternative modernity along the path not taken. This other way shows up in Nicholas of Cusa's conjectural science and in Giambattista Vico's new science of imagination as alternatives to the exclusive reign of positive empirical science. In continuity with Dante's vision, they contribute to a reappropriation of self-reflection for the humanities.

Writing on the cusp of modern botany and during the heyday of English herbals and garden manuals, Shakespeare references at least 180 plants in his works and makes countless allusions to horticultural and botanical practices. Shakespeare's Botanical Imagination moves plants to the foreground of analysis and brings together some of the rich and innovative ways that scholars are expanding the discussion of plants and botany in Shakespeare's writings. The essays gathered here all emphasize the interdependence and entanglement of plants with humans and human life, whether culturally, socially, or materially, and vividly illustrate the fundamental role plants play in human identity. As they attend to the affinities and shared materiality between plants and humans in Shakespeare's works, these essays complicate the comfortable Aristotelian hierarchy of human-animal-plant. And as they do, they often challenge the privileged position of humans in relation to non-human life.

A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts provides a series of answers written by more than forty editors of diverse texts addressing the 'how-to's' of completing an excellent scholarly edition. The Handbook is primarily a practical guide rather than a theoretical forum; it airs common problems and offers a number of solutions to help a range of interested readers, from the lone editor of an unedited document, through to the established academic planning a team-enterprise, multi-volume re-editing of a canonical author. Explicitly, this Handbook does not aim to produce a linear treatise telling its readers how they 'should' edit. Instead, it provides them with a thematically ordered collection of insights drawn from the practical experiences of a symposium of editors. Many implicit areas of consensus on good practice in editing are recorded here, but there are also areas of legitimate disagreement to be charted. The Handbook draws together a diverse range of first person narratives detailing the approaches taken by different editors, with their accompanying rationales, and evaluations of the benefits and problems of their chosen methods. The collection's aim is to help readers to read modern editions more sensitively, and to make better-informed decisions in their own editorial projects.

This bibliography by the distinguished Johnson scholar, the late J. D. Fleeman, records Johnson's literary output in chronological order, illuminating not only his multifarious writings but also the development of his career and reputation as a professional writer. It reveals the range of his work and the variety of his anonymous contributions (some of them first identified by Fleeman) to newspapers, magazines, and books by other writers. Detailed analysis of the works examined sheds light on the practices of the 18th-century book trade, and identifies editions, early and late, many of which are valuable and unjustly neglected. The bibliography also lists new editions up to 1984, the bicentenary of Johnson's death, charting the course of his posthumous literary reputation.

The poems that Coleridge wrote after his golden period are seldom studied or anthologized. Yet among the poems written after his most famous works are many of quality and interest, addressing such universal themes as the nature of the self and the experience of unfulfilled love. Paley examines the later verse in the context of Coleridge's oeuvre, discusses what characterizes it, and looks at why the poet felt he had to develop distinctively different modes of writing for these works. To William Wordsworth is presented as a transitional poem, exhibiting the vatic quality of earlier poems even while declaring that this quality must be abandoned. Morton D. Paley then explores the poetry of the abyss (which he terms The Limbo Constellation), and this is followed by poems on the theme of the self and of love. The last chapter examines the role of epitaphs in the later works, culminating in a study of the epitaph which Coleridge wrote for himself.

This book is about mapping the future of eighteenth-century women's writing and feminist literary history, in an academic culture that is not shy of declaring their obsolescence. It asks: what can or should unite us as scholars devoted to the recovery and study of women's literary history in an era of big data, on the one hand, and ever more narrowly defined specialization, on the other? Leading scholars from the UK and US answer this question in thought-provoking, cross-disciplinary and often polemical essays. Contributors attend to the achievements of eighteenth-century women writers and the scholars who have devoted their lives to them, and map new directions for the advancement of research in the area. They collectively argue that eighteenth-century women's literary history has a future, and that feminism was, and always should be, at its heart. Featuring a Preface by Isobel Grundy, and a Postscript by Cora Kaplan.

John Derricke's Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne is a key work of English print-making, Irish and English history and cultural misunderstanding. The work attests to the complexity of English and Irish relations, colonisation, military history, imperial propaganda, poetry, art, printing and the forging of identity in the early modern British Isles. The original work comprises of a lengthy poetic narrative and twelve famous woodcuts of the highest quality produced in sixteenth-century England. They also represent some of the only contemporary views of early modern Ireland on record. The sixteen interdisciplinary essays in this collection focus on the text's political and historical meaning, print history, iconographic elements, paratexts, literary and artistic influences, and cultural archaeology. The collection will appeal to scholars of many disciplines. -- .

At the start of the seventeenth century a distinction emerged between 'public', outdoor, amphitheatre playhouses and 'private', indoor, hall venues. This book is the first sustained attempt to ask: why? Theatre historians have long acknowledged these terms, but have failed to attest to their variety and complexity. Assessing a range of evidence, from the start of the Elizabethan period to the beginning of the Restoration, the book overturns received scholarly wisdom to reach new insights into the politics of theatre culture and playbook publication. Standard accounts of the 'public' and 'private' theatres have either ignored the terms, or offered insubstantial explanations for their use. This book opens up the rich range of meanings made available by these vitally important terms and offers a fresh perspective on the way dramatists, theatre owners, booksellers, and legislators, conceived the playhouses of Renaissance London.

The first comprehensive analysis of an extensive body of rogue pamphlets published in early modern London. Early modern England was fascinated by the figure of the rogue. The rogue, who could be a beggar or vagrant but also a cutpurse, conman, card sharp, and all-round 'trickster' or even a highwayman, appeared in a variety of texts including plays, ballads, romances, sermons, proclamations, and pamphlets. This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of an extensive body of rogue pamphlets published in London between the late sixteenth and late seventeenthcenturies, a period which saw a burst of publications about criminals. It examines how the figure of the rogue and rogue pamphlets developed and how the pamphlets both reflected and affected readers' perceptions of crime and morality against a backdrop of dramatic urban growth. The book reveals that rogue pamphlets were part of a wider range of popular literature which dealt with London and its early modern transformations and that they were not static representations of criminality but were shaped by the changing cultural expectations of authors, publishers, and readers. Drawing on cutting-edge research, this study represents a timely contribution to the history of the book and early modern print culture, the cultural history of crime, and the socio-cultural history of London. LENA LIAPI teaches early modern history at Keele University.

This is the first book of its kind to include extensive analysis of the travelogues of Baghdad in relation to historiography. This book contains analysis of the stages of travel writing in general and the objectives of the writers, which makes it appealing for people who are keen to learn about the travelogues worldwide. The research in this book encompasses a number of disciplines, including urban history, architecture, literature, travel writing, history of Baghdad, Islamic studies, heritage and conservation. Because of this variety it would appeal to many academics from different backgrounds. Apart from academics, this book would appeal to other people who are interested in history, literature, Arabic, Islamic cities, and learning in general. Some photos and diagrams that are used in this book are taken from original sources that have been rarely published before.

Tombs in Shakespearean Drama explores the rhetorical deployment of tombs and monuments on the early modern stage, demonstrating their historiographic power and mythmaking potential. By analyzing references to tombs in plays by Shakespeare and others in conjunction with extant monuments, this volume demonstrates how these references function in two overlapping ways in period drama: monuments act as repositories of information about the past, and they allow the living to construct and preserve fictive narratives. The stage exposes the flimsy materiality of paper, placing less value on the written word than period poetry. In this way, critics have perhaps oversold as universal Shakespeare's poetic praise of stone. Tombs within plays act as a powerful historical and narrative medium, raising the stakes to provide the stage with the illusion of permanency. Playwrights use tombs to anchor the stage action, giving a sense of lasting importance to dramatic events and combatting the ephemeral nature of the playhouse. In drama, Shakespeare and others drew on the persona preserved on tombs; this volume widens our view of how these representations interacted in the commemorative economy of early modern England. Within the playhouse, it was the tomb, not the tome, that stood as a symbol of permanence.

This is the first comprehensive study of the Renaissance commonplace-book. Commonplace-books were the information-organizers of Early Modern Europe, notebooks of quotations methodically arranged for easy retrieval. From their first introduction to the rudiments of Latin to the specialized studies of leisure reading of their later years, the pupils of humanist schools were trained to use commonplace-books, which formed an immensely important element of Renaissance education. The common-place book mapped and resourced Renaissance culture's moral thinking, its accepted strategies of argumentation, its rhetoric, and its deployment of knowledge. In this ground-breaking study Ann Moss investigates the commonplace-book's medieval antecedents, its methodology and use as promulgated by its humanist advocates, its varieties as exemplified in its printed manifestations, and the reasons for its gradual decline in the seventeenth century. The book covers the Latin culture of Early Modern Europe and its vernacular counterparts and continuations, particularly in France. Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought is much more than an account of humanist classroom practice: it is a major work of cultural history.

In the 19th century, Alessandro Manzoni dedicated himself to writing the novel I promessi sposi that encouraged the Italian Risorgimento. This book traces how the renowned novelist was inspired by an event that occurred at the beginning of the 17th century, which he came to know about thanks to the secret collaboration of a Venetian archivist.

This book, which is the first comprehensive study of its subject, shows how one traditionally esteemed author, the Roman poet Virgil, played an unexpectedly significant role in the shaping of Venetian Renaissance culture. The author draws on reception theory, the sociology of literature, and history of the book to argue that Virgil's poetry became a best-seller because it sometimes challenged, but more often confirmed, the specific moral, religious, and social values its Venetian readers brought with them to their texts. The texts that are used are the printed books of the fifteenth and sixteenth century printed books in which readers of the period encountered Virgil, the prefaces and commentaries that guided their responses, and, the marginal notes that record those responses. How the Renaissance Venetians saw themselves when they looked into their literary past tells us a good deal about them, but it also illuminates a number of issues at the centre of humanistic studies today, ranging from how reading takes place to the role of class and gender in fashioning interpretation. The wide range of interests that are touched on should make this book of value to scholars in the disciplines of classics, history, Renaissance studies, and Italian studies, as well as English literature and cultural studies.

Until now, no detailed examination has been made of the twenty-four portraits known to have been painted of Coleridge during his life. Most of these are still extant, and together they constitute a kind of biography, as well as revealing the assumptions, not only of the sitter and the artists, but also of the culture to which they belong. Each in its different way seems to reveal some aspect of Coleridge's personality. This sequence of images - to which various posthumous and imaginary portraits supply an interesting postscript - are the subject of this illustrated study and catalogue by the eminent Coleridgean and Romantic scholar Morton D. Paley. There are reproductions throughout, two of them in colour.

John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester (1647-80), was a leading member of the group of `court wits' surrounding Charles II. One of the wittiest and most sexually explicit poets in English, his poems circulated principally in manuscript, which makes the tracing of their transmissional history a peculiarly difficult task. In this long-awaited edition, Harold Love, one of the leading scholars of seventeenth-century manuscript circulation, presents a scholarly text based on detailed examination of the manuscripts, with full textual and explanatory notes. It will be an important contribution to the study of manuscript publication as well as a vital resource for all students of Rochester.

Shaul Bassi is Associate Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at Ca'Foscari University of Venice, Italy. His publications include Visions of Venice in Shakespeare, with Laura Tosi, and Experiences of Freedom in Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures, with Annalisa Oboe.

This book takes a closer look at the diversity of fiction writing from Diderot to Markson and by so doing call into question the notion of a singular "theory of fiction," especially in relation to the novel. Unlike Forster's approach to "Aspects of the Novel," which implied there is only one kind of novel to which there may be an aspect, this book deconstructs how one approach to studying something as protean as the novel cannot be accomplished. To that end, the text uses Diderot's This Is Not A Story (1772) and David Markson's This Is Not A Novel (2016) as a frame and imbedded within are essays on De Maistre's Voyage Around My Room (1829), Machado de Assis's Posthumous Memoirs Of Braz Cubas (1881), Andre Breton's Nadja (1928) and Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept (1945).

This book, the first to trace revenge tragedy's evolving dialogue with early modern law, draws on changing laws of evidence, food riots, piracy, and debates over royal prerogative. By taking the genre's legal potential seriously, it opens up the radical critique embedded in the revenge tragedies of Kyd, Shakespeare, Marston, Chettle and Middleton.

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. -- .