Early Modern/Renaissance Literature

Marriage, Performance, and Politics at the Jacobean Court constitutes the first full-length study of Jacobean nuptial performance. Scripted for high-profile weddings by such writers as Jonson, Campion, Chapman, and Beaumont, these entertainments were mounted for some of the most significant politica..

Analyzing understudied vernacular sources from the late medieval period - including sermons, early printed books, spiritual diaries, letters, songs, and hagiographies - Rabia Gregory shows how marrying Jesus was central to late medieval lay piety, and how the 'chaste' bride of Christ developed out o..

Investigated in this study are significant and unexplored signs of John Marston's literary rivalry with Ben Jonson. The centrepiece of the book is its argument that the anonymous play The Family of Love, sometimes attributed to Thomas Middleton and sometimes to Lording Barry, was in part the work of..

Mary Carleton, commonly known as the German Princess, was a scandalous celebrity in Restoration London. Her notoriety arose from her 1663 trial and acquittal for bigamy, which became the occasion of the publication of The Case of Madam Mary Carleton. Here she narrates her version of her life as a ..

Masculinity and Marian Efficacy in Shakespeare's England offers a new approach to evaluating the psychological "loss" of the Virgin Mary in post-Reformation England. The author surveys the early modern cultural and literary response to Mary's marginalization; he argues that Shakespeare employs both..

Masculinity and Marian Efficacy in Shakespeare's England offers a new approach to evaluating the psychological "loss" of the Virgin Mary in post-Reformation England. The author surveys the early modern cultural and literary response to Mary's marginalization; he argues that Shakespeare employs both..

In his study of Spanish Enlightenment writings, Mehl Allan Penrose examines three male tropes: the effeminate and Francophile petimetre; the bujarrón, who engaged in sexual relations with other men; and the Arcadian shepherd, who expressed his desire for other males. Penrose analyzes the constructi..

In his study of Spanish Enlightenment writings, Mehl Allan Penrose examines three male tropes: the effeminate and Francophile petimetre; the bujarrón, who engaged in sexual relations with other men; and the Arcadian shepherd, who expressed his desire for other males. Penrose analyzes the constructi..

Combining analysis of early modern anatomical science, social phenomena such as cross dressing, examples of proto-feminist cultural agency and close readings of English professional theatre texts, the author presents an original investigation into shifting dramatic representations of the sexed and g..

Through analyses of the modes of exchange of material goods between early modern England and Spain, and the circulation of symbolic systems of meaning, the contributors to the anthology -historians and literary critics- investigate the two nations' points of contact and conflict during these histori..

Though recent scholarship has focused on both maternity and romance literature in early modern England, this is the first full-length scholarly volume to address the notable intersections between the two topics. Scrutinizing romance narratives in various forms, the collection explores motherhood as ..

In this study Emilia Wilton-Godberfforde unmasks the process whereby characters in seventeenth-century French comedy construct narratives designed to trick, misdirect, dazzle, confuse or exploit their interlocutors. Analyzing different incarnations of seducer, parasite, cross-dresser, duplicitous n..