This book explores how machinery and the practice of mechanics participate in the intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism. Before the emergence of the concept of technology, sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century writers recognised the applicability of mechanical practices and objects to some of their most urgent moral, aesthetic, and political questions. The construction, use, and representation of devices including clocks, scientific instruments, stage machinery, and war engines not only reflect but also actively reshape how Renaissance writers define and justify artifice and instrumentality - the reliance upon instruments, mechanical or otherwise, to achieve a particular end. Harnessing the discipline of mechanics to their literary and philosophical concerns, scholars and poets including Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, George Chapman, and Gabriel Harvey look to machinery to ponder and dispute all manner of instrumental means, from rhetoric and pedagogy to diplomacy and courtly dissimulation.

This book explores how machinery and the practice of mechanics participate in the intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism. Before the emergence of the modern concept of technology, sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century writers recognized the applicability of mechanical practices and objects to some of their most urgent moral, aesthetic, and political questions. The construction, use, and representation of devices including clocks, scientific instruments, stage machinery, and war engines not only reflect but also actively reshape how Renaissance writers define and justify artifice and instrumentality - the reliance upon instruments, mechanical or otherwise, to achieve a particular end. Harnessing the discipline of mechanics to their literary and philosophical concerns, scholars and poets including Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, George Chapman, and Gabriel Harvey look to machinery to ponder and dispute all manner of instrumental means, from rhetoric and pedagogy to diplomacy and courtly dissimulation.

Essays on Shakespeare, Elizabeth Cary, Erasmus, George Puttenham, William Tyndale, and the Virginia Company, among other topics. Renaissance Papers is a collection of the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The conference accepts papers on all subjects relating to the Renaissance -- music, art, history, literature, etc. -- from scholars all over North America and the world. Of the ten essays in the 2003 volume, three have to do with Shakespeare; among the topics here are Shakespeare and social uprising in The Merchant of Venice, politics and masculinity in Julius Caesar, and the churching of women in Taming of the Shrew; another essay on Renaissance drama focuses attention on Elizabeth Cary's Mariam. Other essays consider Erasmus and the problem of strife, George Puttenham as a comedic artificer, the hermeneutics of William Tyndale, the editorial disputes in The Adventures of Master F.J., the wooing of Amoret and Scudamour, and the "writing" of the Virginia Company. Contributors: Jessica Wolfe, Gerald Snare, Jon Pope, Elizabeth Watson, Wayne Erickson, Mary Free, Amy Scott, Aaron Landau, Jeanne Roberts, and Jay Stubblefield. M. Thomas Hester is professor of English, and Christopher Cobb is assistant professor of English, both at North Carolina State University.

Those who have lost a loved one by suicide often complain obsessively about not having an explanation for what happened; this load of pain, added to the ordeal, is devastating. Jessica Wolf, based on her therapeutic work with suicide survivors, provides answers that offer guidance and accompaniment in such a complicated situation. The author weaves together stories from people who have gone through this difficult time, with clear explanations to understand what happened and emotional tools to process grief. For those who remain, this book is a support to heal, find peace and make sense of existence, despite the absence.