Gathering Force: Early Modern British Literature in Transition, 1557–1623
Gathering Force: Early Modern British Literature in Transition, 1557–1623
£115.00
GBPDuring the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, England grew from a marginal to a major European power, established overseas settlements, and negotiated the Protestant Reformation. The population burgeoned and became increasingly urban. England also saw the meteoric rise of commercial theatre in London, the creation of a vigorous market for printed texts, and the emergence of writing as a viable profession. Literacy rates exploded, and an increasingly diverse audience encountered a profusion of new textual forms. Media, and literary culture, transformed on a scale that would not happen again until television and the Internet. The twenty innovative contributions in Gathering Force: Early Modern Literature in Transition, 1557–1623 trace ways that five different genres both spurred and responded to change. Chapters explore different facets of lyric poetry, romance, commercial drama, masques and pageants, and non-narrative prose. Exciting and accessible, this volume illuminates the dynamic relationships among the period's social, political, and literary transformations.
- Structured to allow readers to choose to approach the volume by reading for scale (overviews of the field, or close readings), or by reading across a particular genre (such as lyric or prose nonfictions)
- Includes essays on well-known canonical texts (such as The Faerie Queene or Doctor Faustus)
- Introduces readers to lesser-known forms such as university drama and Elizabethan pageants
Reviews & endorsements
'… lapses are rare in this valuable book … we hope that it encourages publishers, often dubious about collections, to publish them-and personnel committees to celebrate the achievements of their editors.' Heather Dubrow, Renaissance Quarterly
Product details
January 2019Adobe eBook Reader
9781108321792
0 pages
11 b/w illus.
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- Part I. Generic Transitions:
- 1. The English sonnet: cycles and recycling Catherine Bates
- 2. Romance: traditions and innovations Kenneth Borris
- 3. Drama: forming an audience Lois Potter
- 4. Pageants, masques, and entertainments: old rituals, new forms Lauren Shohet
- 5. Arts of rhetoric: antique and modern Jenny C. Mann
- Part II. Literature and Ideological Transformation:
- 6. Lyric and spiritualism: John Donne's 'The Ecstasy' Douglas Trevor
- 7. Romance and the boundaries of genre and gender Andrew Hadfield
- 8. Drama and globalization in early modern England Daniel J. Vitkus
- 9. The court masque: art and politics Peter Holbrook
- 10. Prose, science, and scripture: Francis Bacon's sacred texts Katherine Bootle Attié
- Part III. Literature and Cultural Transformation:
- 11. Lyric and scientific epistemologies: Bacon and Donne Liza Blake
- 12. Romance and the early modern cultures of the book Sarah Wall-Randell
- 13. Drama and commodity culture in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus Bradley D. Ryner
- 14. Pageantry and politics: the anxiety of arrival Tom Bishop
- 15. Prose and the public sphere David Colclough
- Part IV. Literature and Local Transformation:
- 16. 'Hard to meter well': psalms and early modern English poetry LucÃa MartÃnez Valdivia
- 17. Romance, magical space, and Wroth's Urania Sheila Cavanagh
- 18. Drama and the playhouse Lucy Munro
- 19. Greek tragedy on the university stage: Buchanan and Euripides Hannah Crawforth and Lucy Jackson
- 20. Prose and the pulpit Lori Anne Ferrell.
