This chapter discusses the dazzling array of creativity that is language and metaphor in Pindar, in terms of its impact on us as its consumers and in terms of the questions that aspects of lyric diction and style ask of us. The discussion reaffirms the importance of close reading from the inside out as the key to appreciating the nature and challenge of Pindaric lyric. It assesses the powers and risks that come with lyric language in detail and across time, as readers and audiences are stopped in their tracks. The chapter discusses the experiential potential of a representative selection of examples taken from across the corpus, in three sections. Section 1, ‘Options’, investigates how Pindaric lyric fosters both a freedom of expression and an encouragement to audiences and readers to keep their minds open in response. Section 2, ‘Colours of Desire’, explores the sustained intensificatory effects of marked imagery in one extended example from Olympian 6. Section 3, ‘Access and Appropriateness’, explores how the hyperbolic nature of lyric imagery may raise further questions about our commitments to the sentiments that Pindaric lyric finds itself able to project.

While Sancho discussed slavery in his letters decades before British opposition to that institution coalesced and became institutionally codified, he undeniably took a firmly anti-slavery and anti-racist stance in his manuscript correspondence. He used his familiar letters to critique and oppose slavery as a practice and an institution as well as to reject and undermine the validity of emerging concepts of “race” in an effort to oppose their effects in the world. Three core strategies emerge: first, satirizing and critiquing the metaphorical mapping of moral character onto skin color in the service of white supremacy; second, reappropriating and resignifying animal metaphors and racial tropes to undermine their efficacy in subjugating humans and non-humans alike within a slaving society; and third, recovering self-determination and agency for Black subjects by asserting ownership over his own body through the manual labor of writing.

The Book of Proverbs was adapted and recycled in multiple versions in early modern England, primarily because it was easy to break down into digestible units. Through the powerful example of the Book of Proverbs, author suggests that Reformation thought re-invigorates the reading, interpretation and application of feminine precursors to be found in the Bible. The Book of Proverbs is a frequent and popular choice for female encomia in the seventeenth century. The positive valuations of female speech rest heavily on the preconditions supplied by situation, audience and context, and surface at various points throughout Proverbs. Frequently the model of the virtuous woman involves referring the reader to the catalogue of exemplary biblical women. Robert Cleaver's commentary highlights the virtuous woman of Proverbs as a model for emulation within the household, and is aimed at husbands and wives alike.

Ignatius Sancho described his Letters as the product of an “African sensibility.” This chapter explores what he meant by this, locating the term “sensibility,” and its cognate “sentiment,” in the context of Scottish Enlightenment science of man (David Hume, Lord Kames, Adam Smith). Through close reading, it examines how Sancho, as a sentimental epistolary writer, used his sensibility to affirm his humanity, reinforce friendships, and make political observation. Sancho’s sentimental epistolary practice, shaped by his correspondence with Laurence Sterne in 1766, was notable for his use of the dash to punctuate his writing. The chapter argues that although both writers use the dash for rhetorical effect, Sancho’s “dashing style” is distinct from Sterne’s punctuational practice. The chapter argues also that Sancho’s mode of sensibility was important in his assessment as a sentimental man of letters in the debate on African arts and letters in the 1770s and early 1780s.

The Old Testament's pages weave together the stories of mothers, daughters, wives and queens, as well as female prophets, judges and military leaders, who shape biblical history. Biblical women were mobilised in the period's domestic writings. In Genesis, the bodies and decisions of women, such as Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, enable the establishment of the Israelite nation. While Rebecca may indeed be understood to figure Elizabeth in Jacoband Esau, it was the Old Testament judge Deborah who was more commonly used to celebrate, and authorise, the authority of England's Queen. Identification with the speaking women of the Bible was an important authorising tactic of early modern women writers, and the prayer of Hannah, as well as the songs of Miriamand Deborah, acquired particular resonance. Tracing 'Womens words' across the Old Testament, Fell lays claim to a biblical tradition of female preaching that has been appropriated by men.

Gulliver’s Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver’s adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed him to be a real person. Later commentators have variously described the work as proto-science fiction, as inspired children’s literature and as a forerunner of the modern novel. The editor’s introduction to this celebratory anniversary edition contextualises Gulliver’s Travels in Swift’s life and work as a whole while exploring its rich and remarkable afterlife. All the original illustrations and maps are included, as are the frontispiece portraits. Generous annotation explains textual details which might now seem obscure, and appendices contain additional documents and images to enhance contemporary understanding and enjoyment.

This chapter argues that early modern Catholic accounts of Marian grief continued to nostalgically present Virgin Mary using the medieval motif of the Stabat Mater Dolorosa. The Virgin at the cross is understood, in the Stabat Mater Dolorosa tradition, to be poised between grief and happiness; sorrow and exaltation; agony and triumph. Mary's participation at the cross was understood to authorise her intercessionary powers, reasserting her significance in an era coming to terms with the eradication of purgatory from Protestant doctrine. Thomas Lodge's Prosopopeia containing the teares of the holy, blessed, and sanctified Marie, the Mother of God directly engages with the performative nature of the Virgin's grief. Mary's grief at the cross does not simply operate as a static image of medieval Catholicism; instead, that legacy is negotiated in the texts to reveal what the Virgin represented to the particular historical moment.

Gulliver’s Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver’s adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed him to be a real person. Later commentators have variously described the work as proto-science fiction, as inspired children’s literature and as a forerunner of the modern novel. The editor’s introduction to this celebratory anniversary edition contextualises Gulliver’s Travels in Swift’s life and work as a whole while exploring its rich and remarkable afterlife. All the original illustrations and maps are included, as are the frontispiece portraits. Generous annotation explains textual details which might now seem obscure, and appendices contain additional documents and images to enhance contemporary understanding and enjoyment.

Gulliver’s Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver’s adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed him to be a real person. Later commentators have variously described the work as proto-science fiction, as inspired children’s literature and as a forerunner of the modern novel. The editor’s introduction to this celebratory anniversary edition contextualises Gulliver’s Travels in Swift’s life and work as a whole while exploring its rich and remarkable afterlife. All the original illustrations and maps are included, as are the frontispiece portraits. Generous annotation explains textual details which might now seem obscure, and appendices contain additional documents and images to enhance contemporary understanding and enjoyment.

Early modern scholarship has accepted the Whore of Babylon's popularity and synonymy with Catholicism, and her evocation within discourses of anti-popery has been acknowledged in studies of Catholicism and discussions of dramas set in southern Europe. For Protestants, reading the Whore of Babylon was central to a broader attempt to create and maintain a strict opposition between the opposing factions of Christianity. Martin Luther declared the Whore's Roman Catholic identity by including a woodcut depicting her in the papal tiara in his 1522 New Testament. This interpretation gained credibility among reformers on the continent, it accrued similar respect and popularity in England through the work of John Bale, John Foxe and Heinrich Bullinger. Richard Bernard's instructions demonstrate that the reformers did not abandon their commitment to the literal but instead accepted a form of literalism that was, paradoxically, figural.

Gulliver’s Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver’s adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed him to be a real person. Later commentators have variously described the work as proto-science fiction, as inspired children’s literature and as a forerunner of the modern novel. The editor’s introduction to this celebratory anniversary edition contextualises Gulliver’s Travels in Swift’s life and work as a whole while exploring its rich and remarkable afterlife. All the original illustrations and maps are included, as are the frontispiece portraits. Generous annotation explains textual details which might now seem obscure, and appendices contain additional documents and images to enhance contemporary understanding and enjoyment.