A Companion to Tudor Literature

A Companion to Tudor Literature presents a collection of thirty-one newly commissioned essays focusing on English literature and culture from the reign of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.

• Presents students with a valuable historical and cultural context to the period
• Discusses key texts and representative subjects, and explores issues including international influences, religious change, travel and New World discoveries, women’s writing, technological innovations, medievalism, print culture, and developments in music and in modes of seeing and reading

List of Illustrations viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xv

Chronology xvi
Kathleen Bossert

Map of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the Sixteenth Century xxxi

Introduction 1
Kent Cartwright

Part I Historical and Cultural Contexts 13

1 The Reformation, Lollardy, and Catholicism 15
Peter Marshall

2 Witchcraft in Tudor England and Scotland 31
Kathryn A. Edwards

3 The Tudor Experience of Islam 49
Matthew Dimmock

4 Protestantism, Profi t, and Politics: Tudor Representations of the New World 63
Nancy Bradley Warren

5 International Infl uences and Tudor Music 79
Ross W. Duffin

6 Tudor Technology in Transition 95
Adam Max Cohen

7 Enclosing the Body: Tudor Conceptions of Skin 111
Tanya Pollard

Part II Manuscript, Print, and Letters 123

8 Manuscripts in Tudor England 125
Steven W. May and Heather Wolfe

9 John Skelton and the State of Letters 140
Seth Lerer

10 The Henrician Courtier Writing in Manuscript and Print: Wyatt, Surrey, Bryan, and Others 151
David R. Carlson

11 Old Authors, Women Writers, and the New Print Technology 178
Helen Smith

12 Printers of Interludes 192
Peter Happé

Part III Literary Origins, Presences, Absences 211

13 Medievalism in English Renaissance Literature 213
Deanne Williams

14 The Tudor Origins of Medieval Drama 228
Theresa Coletti and Gail McMurray Gibson

15 French Presences in Tudor England 246
A. E. B. Coldiron

16 Italian in Tudor England: Why Couldn’t a Woman Be More Like a Man? 261
Pamela J. Benson

Part IV Authors, Works, and Modes 277

17 More’s Utopia: Medievalism and Radicalism 279
Anne Lake Prescott

18 The Literary Voices of Katherine Parr and Anne Askew 295
Joan Pong Linton

19 Reformation Satire, Scatology, and Iconoclastic Aesthetics in Gammer Gurton’s Needle 309
Robert Hornback

20 Bad Fun and Tudor Laughter 324
Pamela Allen Brown

21 Perspective and Realism in the Renaissance 339
Alastair Fowler

22 Seeing through Words in Theories of Poetry: Sidney, Puttenham, Lodge 350
Gavin Alexander

23 Tudor Versification and the Rise of Iambic Pentameter 364
Jeff Dolven

24 John Lyly’s Galatea: Politics and Literary Allusion 381
Mike Pincombe

25 Sidney’s Arcadia, Romance, and the Responsive Woman Reader 395
Clare R. Kinney

26 Nature and Technê in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 412
Jessica Wolfe

27 “In Poesie the mirrois of our Age”: The Countess of Pembroke’s “Sydnean” Poetics 428
Suzanne Trill

28 “Conceived of young Horatio his son”: The Spanish Tragedy and the Psychotheology of Revenge 444
Heather Hirschfeld

29 West of England: The Irish Specter in Tamburlaine 459
Kimberly Anne Coles

30 The Real and the Unreal in Tudor Travel Writing 475
Mary C. Fuller

31 Jack and the City: The Unfortunate Traveler, Tudor London, and Literary History 489
Steve Mentz

Index 504

"The individual chapters, however, do provide new (and advanced) members of the field with authoritative, accessible and well-written guides to important topics, authors and works." (The Society for Renaissance Studies, 1 April 2011)

"The Companion is both a learned introduction for scholars of English literature, and a fascinating compilation of academic essays well suited to university libraries". (Languages & Literature, November 2010)

"The Companion is both a learned introduction for scholars of English literature, and a fascinating compilation of academic essays well suited to university libraries." (Reference Reviews, October 2010)

Kent Cartwright is Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Maryland. He is author of Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double: The Rhythms of Audience Response (1991), which was selected as a Choice “outstanding academic book”; and Theatre and Humanism: English Drama in the Sixteenth Century (1999), winner of the Calvin and Rose Hoffman Prize for its chapter on Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. He is also a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library. This cutting-edge Companionpresents a diverse and provocative collection of scholarship on English literature and its contexts from the accession of Henry VII in 1485 to the end of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1603.

Featuring thirty-one newly commissioned essays from both emerging and well-established literary scholars, A Companion to Tudor Literature considers some of the period's most distinctive voices and works. A major focus of the text lies in the literary styles and cultural developments of the first half of the Tudor dynasty - the foundational period that preceded the golden age of Elizabethan England. The Companion explores issues including international influences, religious change, travel and New World discoveries, women’s writing, technological innovations, medievalism, and print culture. Also discussed are developments in music, modes of seeing and reading, and implicit questionings of human nature, along with key texts and other representative subjects.

Filled with fresh insight and the latest scholarship, A Companion to Tudor Literature will draw well-deserved attention to this exciting period of literary history.

This cutting-edge Companion presents a diverse and provocative collection of scholarship on English literature and its contexts from the accession of Henry VII in 1485 to the end of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1603.

Featuring thirty-one newly commissioned essays from both emerging and well-established literary scholars, A Companion to Tudor Literature considers some of the period's most distinctive voices and works. A major focus of the text lies in the literary styles and cultural developments of the first half of the Tudor dynasty - the foundational period that preceded the golden age of Elizabethan England. The Companion explores issues including international influences, religious change, travel and New World discoveries, women’s writing, technological innovations, medievalism, and print culture. Also discussed are developments in music, modes of seeing and reading, and implicit questionings of human nature, along with key texts and other representative subjects.

Filled with fresh insight and the latest scholarship, A Companion to Tudor Literature will draw well-deserved attention to this exciting period of literary history.