Book Reviews: Théâtre élisabéthain, Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter, the Martin Marprelate Tracts, Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare, the New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England, Shakespeare in Stages: New Theatre Histories, Shakespeare's Individualism, Dance, Spectacle and the Body Politick

2010 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Pentland ◽  
David Salter ◽  
Nick Myers ◽  
Lisa Hopkins ◽  
Stuart Sillars ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
Saint Francis ◽  
Martin Marprelate

Digging the Dirt in the Pursuit of Cleanliness

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Susan North
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
History Of The Body ◽  
History Of

The introduction outlines the historiography on cleanliness and the influence of Georges Vigarello on early modern social history and history of the body. It reviews both the philosophical and the practical aspects that make researching cleanliness so challenging. On one hand, the prejudices of contemporary observers and commentators are acknowledged and, on the other, the practice of cleanliness is so habitual it goes unnoticed and unrecorded. The methodology for the book is described, first to use traditional documentary sources from a variety of media to elucidate what advice was given about cleanliness in early modern England. In order to determine whether such advice was followed, a study of the material culture of cleanliness is proposed and outlined, acknowledging that it may be more successful for linen than for bodies. Finally the drawing together of these various strands of research is emphasized.

Geographies of Embodiment in Early Modern England

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Edmund Spenser ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Body ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Place Memory ◽  
Spirit World

Geographies of Embodiment in Early Modern England gathers essays from prominent scholars of English Renaissance literature and history who have made substantial contributions to the field’s discussions of early modern embodiment, environment, affect, cognition, memory, and natural philosophy. The essays in this collection provide new interpretations of the geographic dimensions of early modern embodiment, emphasizing understandings of the relationship between the body and world as transactional and dynamic rather than static or fixed. The geographies of embodiment encompass both cognitive processes and cosmic environments; inner emotional states and affective landscapes. Rather than always being territorialized onto individual bodies, ideas about early modern embodiment are varied both in their scope and in terms of their representation. Reflecting this variation, this volume offers up a range of inquiries into how early modern writers accounted for the exchanges between the microcosm and macrocosm: essays consider, for example, the epistemologies of navigation and cartography, the implications of geohumoralism, the ethics of self-mastery, theories of early modern cosmology, the construction of place memory, and the perceived influences of an animate spirit world. Throughout the volume, scholars engage with Gail Kern Paster’s groundbreaking and influential scholarship on embodiment, humoralism, the passions, and historical phenomenology. Moreover, contributors offer new readings of early modern literary authors, including Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Thomas Nashe, and John Milton.

Doubtful Readers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin A. McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
English Literature ◽  
John Donne ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Aemilia Lanyer ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Early Modern Poetry ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
Over Time

Doubtful Readers: Print, Poetry, and the Reading Public in Early Modern England focuses on early modern publishers’ efforts to identify and accommodate new readers of verse that had previously been restricted to particular social networks in manuscript. Focusing on the period between the maturing of the market for printed English literature in the 1590s and the emergence of the professional poet following the Restoration, this study shows that poetry was shaped by—and itself shaped—strong print publication traditions. By reading printed editions of poems by William Shakespeare, Aemilia Lanyer, John Donne, and others, this book shows how publishers negotiated genre, gender, social access, reputation, literary knowledge, and the value of English literature itself. It uses literary, historical, bibliographical, and quantitative evidence to show how publishers’ strategies changed over time. Ultimately, Doubtful Readers argues that although—or perhaps because—publishers’ interpretive and editorial efforts are often elided in studies of early modern poetry, their interventions have had an enduring impact on our canons, texts, and literary histories.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
The Body ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
Disciplinary Field ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Integral Feature

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance is the first collection of essays to examine the relationship between William Shakespeare and dance. Despite recent academic interest in movement, materiality, and the body—and the growth of dance studies as a disciplinary field—Shakespeare’s employment of dance as both a theatrical device and thematic reference point remains under-studied. The reimagining of his writing as dance works is also neglected as a subject for research. Alan Brissenden’s 1981 Shakespeare and the Dance remains the seminal text for those interested in early modern dancing and its appearances within Shakespearean drama, but this new volume provides a single source of reference for dance as both an integral feature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture and as a means of translating Shakespearean text into movement.

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