A team of international contributors explores the way modern conceptions of what constitutes an individual's life story emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Enlightenment idea of the self--an autonomous individual, testing rules imposed from without against a personal sensibility nourished from within--is today vigorously contested. By analyzing early-modern "life writing" in all its variety, from private diaries and correspondences to public confessions and philosophical portraits, this volume shows that the relation between self and community is more complex and more intimate than supposed.

As an historical figure Mary Queen of Scots has been perpetually represented on canvas, page and stage, and has captured the British imagination since the time of her death in 1587. The 'real' Mary Stuart however has remained an enigma.
Mary Queen of Scots: Romance and Nation sheds light on Mary's life by exploring four main themes:
* the history of Mary's representation in Britain from the late Tudor period focusing on key periods in the formation of the British identity and closely analysing several texts against a background of the visual, musical and literary works of each period
* the reasons why those representing Mary have been so conscious that her image was largely a debatable fiction
* the identification of symbolic styles, using Mary to reveal the habits of representation in each historical period
* The link between the image of Mary Stuart and Britain's long struggle to define itself as a single nation, focusing on the roles of gender and religion in this development.

As an historical figure Mary Queen of Scots has been perpetually represented on canvas, page and stage, and has captured the British imagination since the time of her death in 1587. The real Mary Stuart however has remained an enigma. This text sheds light on Mary's life and national identity by exploring four main themes: the history of Mary's representation in Britain from the late Tudor period focusing on key periods in the formation of the British identity and closely analyzing several texts against a background of the visual, musical and literary works of each period; the reasons why those representing Mary have been so conscious that her image was a debateable fiction; the identification of distinctive symbolic styles, using Mary to reveal the formation of habits of representation in each historical period; and the link between the image of Mary Stuart and Britain's long struggle to define itself as a single nation, focusing on the roles of gender and religion in this development.

In this volume a team of international contributors explore the way modern conceptions of what constitutes an individual's life-story emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Enlightenment idea of the self - an autonomous individual, testing rules imposed from without against a personal sensibility nourished from within - is today vigourously contested. By analysing early modern 'life writing' in all its variety, from private diaries and correspondence to public confessions and philosophical portraits, this volume shows that the relation between self and community is more complex and more intimate than supposed. Spanning the period from the end of the Renaissance to the eve of Romanticism in western Europe, a period in which the explosion of print culture afforded unprecedented opportunities for the circulation of life-stories from all classes, this book examines the public assertion of self by men and women in England, France and Germany from the Renaissance to Romanticism.

The cultural highlights of the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714) have long been overlooked. However, recent scholarship, including the present volume, is demonstrating that Anne has been seriously underestimated, both as a person, and as a monarch, and that there was much cultural activity of note in what might be called an interim period, coming after the deaths of Dryden and Purcell but before the blossoming of Pope and Handel, after the glories of Baroque architecture but before the triumph of Burlingtonian neoclassicism. The authors of Queen Anne and the Arts make a case for Anne's reign as a time of experimentation and considerable accomplishment in new genres, some of which developed, some of which faded away. The volume includes essays on the music, drama, poetry, quasi-operas, political pamphlets, and architecture, as well as on newer genres, such as coin and medal collecting, hymns, and poetical miscellanies, all produced during Anne's reign.

At the time of his death in 1700, John Dryden was acknowledged as England's greatest writer, his reputation even rivaling that of Shakespeare. Certainly, whether considered as a poet, a dramatist, or as a critic, Dryden far outstripped his contemporaries in the sheer scope and variety of his literary production. The amazing versatility of his pen was matched only by the transformational energy that shapes individual works, from heroic dramas to great satires. For Enchanted Ground, Jayne Lewis and Maximillian E. Novak have brought together many of the world's experts on Dryden, and their essays reflect a range of new, uniquely twenty-first-century views of him. The book is divided into two sections. The first explores Dryden's role as a public poet who had made himself the voice of the restored Stuart court. The second considers Dryden's relationship to the arts and particularly to the past and to Shakespeare. Dryden was a poet for all ages. These essays provide fresh readings of Dryden and bring scholarship on him fully up-to-date.