A thorough and scholarly study of Spenser and Shakespeare and their contrary artistry, covering themes of theology, psychology, the depictions of passion and intellect, moral counsel, family hierarchy, self-love, temptation, folly, allegory, female heroism, the supernatural and much more. Renaissance psychologies examines the distinct and polarised emphasis of these two towering intellects and writers of the early modern period. It demonstrates how pervasive was the influence of Spenser on Shakespeare, as in the "playful metamorphosis of Gloriana into Titania" in A Midsummer Night's Dream and its return from Spenser's moralizing allegory to the Ovidian spirit of Shakespeare's comedy. It will appeal to students and lecturers in Spenser studies, Renaissance poetry and the wider fields of British literature, social and cultural history, ethics and theology. -- .

Collection of the best scholarly essays from the 2020 Southeastern Renaissance Conference plus essays submitted directly to the journal. Topics run from the epic to influence studies to the perennial problem of love and beyond. Renaissance Papers 2020 features essays from the conference held virtually at Mercer University, as well as essays submitted directly to the journal. The volume opens with an essay that discusses the "ultimate story," the epic, and argues, pointing to the Henriad and The Faerie Queen, that some of the most ambitious remain unfinished; an essay on "just war" and Henry V follows, suggesting why such epic inconclusion may not be such a bad thing. A trio of influence studies investigate post-Marian virginity, Miltonic environmentalism, and cross-dressing knights. Three essays then interrogate the perennial problem of love: in popular ballads, in Hero and Leander, and in The Rape of Lucrece. An essay argues counterintuitively for Amelia Lanyer and Margaret Cavendish as exemplars of the Cavalier Ideal of the Bonum Vitae; it is followed by an equally provocative reconsideration of the role of Claudio D'Arezzo's rhetorical works for Sicilian national identity. The last essay analyzes the formal signatures of three sixteenth-century queens and how they sought to represent themselves on the public stage.

Sixty-sixth annual volume, taking in a range of topics relating to the literature of the period, from the power of naming to Shakespeare and Spenser, Herbert, Margaret Tyler and Margaret Cavendish, and Ben Jonson. Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The 2019 volume, the sixty-sixth annual, features essays from the conference held at North Carolina StateUniversity, as well as essays submitted directly to the journal. The volume opens with an essay on the power of naming in creating early modern subjectivities, followed by a pair of provocative discussions of Shakespeare's plays:the first addresses temporal gaps in A Winter's Tale; the second is a reading of misogyny in The Taming of the Shrew in which Petruchio is no longer seen as "the true tamer." The two essays at the epicenter of thisyear's volume focus on religious topics, with a consideration of the mystical, specifically the notion of ascesis, in the work of Shakespeare and Spenser, followed by a more sublunary presentation of religious themes in George Herbert's estate poems. The next essay proposes a novel source for Margaret Tyler's reference to "the Jews" in her "Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood" and is followed by a reconsideration of the variety of epitaphic subgenres available in the seventeenth century. The penultimate essay addresses Margaret Cavendish, Ben Jonson, and humanist dramaturgy, and the essay that concludes the journal examines Jonson's attempts to construct a hierarchy of literaryvalue within the complex constraints of the early modern marketplace.