A Concise Companion to English Renaissance Literature

This Concise Companion launches students into the study of English Renaissance literature through the central contexts that informed it.

• Places the poetry within contexts such as: economics; religion; empire and exploration; education, humanism and rhetoric; censorship and patronage; royal marriage and succession; treason and rebellion; “others” in England; private lives; cosmology and the body; and life-writing.
  
• Incorporates recent developments in the field, as well as work soon to be published.
  
• Entices students to explore the subject further.
  
• Provides new syntheses that will be of interest to scholars.
  
• All the contributors are highly regarded scholars and teachers.

Notes on Contributors vii

Introduction 1
Donna B. Hamilton

1 Economics 11
S. P. Cerasano

2 Religion 32
Donna B. Hamilton

3 Royal Marriage and the Royal Succession 54
Paul E. J. Hammer

4 Patronage, Licensing, and Censorship 75
Richard Dutton

5 Humanism, Rhetoric, Education 94
Peter Mack

6 Manuscripts in Early Modern England 114
Heather Wolfe

7 Travel, Exploration, and Empire 136
Ralph Bauer

8 Private Life and Domesticity 160
Lena Cowen Orlin

9 Treason and Rebellion 180
Andrew Hadfield

10 Shakespeare and the Marginalized ‘‘Others’’ 200
Carole Levin

11 Cosmology and the Body 217
Cynthia Marshall

12 Life-Writing 238
Alan Stewart

Index 257

Donna B. Hamilton is Professor of English at the University of Maryland. Her previous publications include Virgil and 'The Tempest': The Politics of Imitation (1990), Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (1992), Religion, Literature and Politics in Post-Reformation England (co-edited with Richard Strier, 1996), Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633 (2005), and an edition of Middleton's The Puritan (2005). This Concise Companion launches students into the study of English Renaissance literature by way of the key contexts that informed it.

The contributors, who are all highly regarded scholars and teachers in the field, place the literature of the period within a set of relevant historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, including: economics; religion; empire and exploration; education, humanism and rhetoric; censorship and patronage; royal marriage and succession; treason and rebellion; “others” in England; private lives; cosmology and the body; and life-writing. Their contributions incorporate recent developments in the field, as well as work soon to be published.

The volume as a whole makes the period accessible and enticing to students, and provides innovative syntheses that will be of interest to scholars.