Bøger i Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies serien

The completed texts of two of the greatest epic poems in English literature are combined in one volume where each provides a profound exploration of the moral problems of God's justice. Each work demonstrates Milton's genius for classicism, innovation, narrative and drama. Includes a new introduction and extensive footnotes.

This authoritative text of the first edition of John Milton's Paradise Lost transcribes the original 10-book poem, records its textual problems and numerous differences from the second edition, and discusses in critical commentary the importance of these issues.

Following the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649, the seventeenth century witnessed an explosion of print culture in England, including an unprecedented boom in biographical writing. Andrea Walkden offers a case-study examination of this fascinating trend, bringing together texts that generations of scholars have considered piecemeal and primarily as sources for their own research.Private Lives Made Public: The Invention of Biography in Early Modern England contributes an incisive, fresh take on life-writing?a catch-all label that, in contemporary discourse, encompasses biography, autobiography, memoirs, letters, diaries, journals, and even blogs and examines why the writing of life stories appeared somehow newly necessary and newly challenging for political discourse in the late seventeenth century. Walkden engages readers in a compelling discussion of what she terms biographical populism, arguing that the biographies of this period sought to replace political argument with life stories, thus conducting politics by another means. The modern biography, then, emerges after 1649 as a cultural weapon designed to reorient political discourse away from the analysis of public institutions and practices toward a less threatening, but similarly meaningful, conversation about the unfolding of an individual's life in the realm of private experience.Unlike other recent studies, Walkden moves toward a consideration of widely consumed works?the Eikon Basilike, Izaak Walton's Lives, John Aubrey's Brief Lives, and Daniel Defoe's Memoirs of a Cavalier?and gives particular attention to their complex engagement with that political and literary moment.

Forgiving the Gift challenges the tendency to reflexively understand gifts as exchanges, negotiations, and circulations. Lawrence reads plays by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare as informed by an early modern belief in the possibility and even necessity of radical generosity, of gifts that break the cycle of economy and self-interest.The prologue reads Marlowe''s Dr. Faustus to show how the play aligns gift and grace, depicting Faustus''s famous bond as the instrument simultaneously of reciprocal exchange and of damnation. In the introduction, the author frames his argument theoretically by placing Marcel Mauss''s classic essay, "The Gift," into dialogue with Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricoeur to sketch two very different understandings of gift-giving. In the first, described by Mauss, the gift becomes a covert form of exchange. Though Mauss contrasts the gift economy with the market economy, his description of the gift economy nevertheless undermines his own project of discovering in it a basis for social solidarity. In the second understanding of gift exchange, derived from the philosophy of Levinas, the gift expresses the radical asymmetry of ethical concern.Literature and philosophy scholars alike will benefit from the original readings of The Merchant of Venice, Edward II, King Lear, Titus Andronicus, and The Tempest, which constitute the body of the text. These readings find in the plays a generosity that exceeds the social practice of gift-giving, because extraordinarily generous acts of friendship or filial affection survive the collapse of social norms. Antonio in Merchant and the title character in Edward II practice a friendship whose extravagance marks its excess. Lear, on the other hand, brings about his tragedy by attempting to reduce filial love to debt. Titus also discovers a love excessive to social convention when rape and mutilation annihilate his daughter''s cultural value. Finally, Prospero in The Tempest sacrifices power and even his own life for the love of his daughter, giving a gift rendered asymmetrical by both its excess and its secrecy.While proposing new readings of works of Renaissance drama, Forgiving the Gift also questions the model of human life from which many contemporary readings, especially those characterized as new historicist or cultural materialist, grow. In so doing, it addresses questions of how we are to understand literary texts-and how we are to live with others in the world.

How does soil, as an ecological element, shape culture? With the sixteenth-century shift in England from an agrarian economy to a trade economy, what changes do we see in representations of soil as reflected in the language and stories during that time? This collection brings focused scholarly attention to conceptions of soil in the early modern period, both as a symbol and as a feature of the physical world, aiming to correct faulty assumptions that cloud our understanding of early modern ecological thought: that natural resources were then poorly understood and recklessly managed, and that cultural practices developed in an adversarial relationship with natural processes. Moreover, these essays elucidate the links between humans and the lands they inhabit, both then and now.

Eating and drinking?vital to all human beings?were of central importance to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Culinary Shakespeare, the first collection devoted solely to the study of food and drink in Shakespeare's plays, reframes questions about cuisine, eating, and meals in early modern drama. As a result, Shakespearean scenes that have long been identified as important and influential by scholars can now be considered in terms of another revealing cultural marker?that of culinary dynamics.Renaissance scholars, as David Goldstein and Amy Tigner point out, have only begun to grapple with the importance of cuisine in literature. An earlier generation of criticism concerned itself principally with cataloguing the foodstuffs in the plays. Recent analyses have operated largely within debates about humoralism and dietary literature, consumption, and interiority, working to historicize food in relation to the early modern body. The essays in Culinary Shakespeare build upon that prior focus on individual bodily experience but also transcend it, emphasizing the aesthetic, communal, and philosophical aspects of food, while also presenting valuable theoretical background. As various essays demonstrate, many of the central issues in Shakespeare studies can be elucidated by turning our attention to the study of food and drink. The societal and religious associations of drink, for example, or the economic implications of ingredients gathered from other lands, have meaningful implications for our understanding of both early modern and contemporary periods?including aspects of community, politics, local and global food production, biopower and the state, addiction, performativity, posthumanism, and the relationship between art and food. Culinary Shakespeare seeks to open new interpretive possibilities and will be of interest to scholars and students of Shakespeare and the early modern period as well as to those in food studies, food history, ecology, gender and domesticity, and critical theory.

Explores the philosophical significance of gluttony in Paradise Lost, arguing that a complex understanding of gluttony and of ideal, grateful, and gracious eating informs the content of Milton's writing.

Examines Milton's identification with characters in Jesus's parables. Connects Milton's engagement with the parables to his self-representation throughout his poetry and prose.

In this comparative and hybrid study, Reginald A. Wilburn offers the first scholarly work to theorize African American authors'' rebellious appropriations of Milton and his canon. Wilburn engages African Americans'' transatlantic negotiations with perhaps the preeminent freedom writer in the English tradition.Preaching the Gospel of Black Revolt contends that early African American authors appropriated and remastered Milton by completing and complicating England''s epic poet of liberty with the intertextual originality of repetitive difference. Wilburn focuses on a diverse array of early African American authors, such as Phillis Wheatley, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frederick Douglass, and Anna Julia Cooper. He examines the presence of Milton in their works as a reflection of early African Americans'' rhetorical affiliations with the poet''s satanic epic for messianic purposes of freedom and racial uplift.Wilburn explains that early African American authors were attracted to Milton because of his preeminent status in literary tradition, strong Christian convictions, and poetic mastery of the English language. This tripartite ministry makes Milton an especially indispensible intertext for authors whose writings and oratory were sometimes presumed beneath the dignity of criticism. Through close readings of canonical and obscure texts, Wilburn explores how various authors rebelled against such assessments of black intellect by altering Milton''s meanings, themes, and figures beyond orthodox interpretations and imbuing them with hermeneutic shades of interpretive and cultural difference. However they remastered Milton, these artists respected his oeuvre as a sacred yet secular talking book of revolt, freedom, and cultural liberation.Preaching the Gospel of Black Revolt particularly draws upon recent satanic criticism in Milton studies, placing it in dialogue with methodologies germane to African American literary studies. By exposing the subversive workings of an intertextual Middle Passage in black literacy, Wilburn invites scholars from diverse areas of specialization to traverse within and beyond the cultural veils of racial interpretation and along the color line in literary studies.

In The Plague in Print, Rebecca Totaro takes the reader into the world of plague-riddled Elizabethan England, documenting the development of distinct subgenres related to the plague and providing unprecedented access to important original sources of early modern plague writing. Totaro elucidates the interdisciplinary nature of plague writing, which raises religious, medical, civic, social, and individual concerns in early modern England. Each of the primary texts in the collection offers a glimpse into a particular subgenre of plague writing, beginning with Thomas Moulton''s plague remedy and prayers published by the Church of England and devoted to the issue of the plague. William Bullein''s A Dialogue, both pleasant and pietyful, a work that both addresses concerns related to the plague and offers humorous literary entertainment, exemplifies the multilayered nature of plague literature. The plague orders of Queen Elizabeth I highlight the community-wide attempts to combat the plague and deal with its manifold dilemmas. And after a plague bill from the Corporation of London, the collection ends with Thomas Dekker''s The Wonderful Year, which illustrates plague literature as it was fully formed, combining attitudes toward the plague from both the Elizabethan and Stuart periods.These writings offer a vivid picture of important themes particular to plague literature in England, providing valuable insight into the beliefs and fears of those who suffered through bubonic plague while illuminating the cultural significance of references to the plague in the more familiar early modern literature by Spenser, Donne, Milton, Shakespeare, and others. As a result, The Plague in Print will be of interest to students and scholars in a number of fields, including sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, cultural studies, medical humanities, and the history of medicine.

The completed texts of two of the greatest epic poems in English literature are combined in one volume where each provides a profound exploration of the moral problems of God's justice. Each work demonstrates Milton's genius for classicism, innovation, narrative and drama. Includes a new introduction and extensive footnotes.

Following the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649, the seventeenth century witnessed an explosion of print culture in England, including an unprecedented boom in biographical writing. Andrea Walkden offers a case-study examination of this fascinating trend, bringing together texts that generations of scholars have considered piecemeal and primarily as sources for their own research.Private Lives Made Public: The Invention of Biography in Early Modern England contributes an incisive, fresh take on life-writing-a catch-all label that, in contemporary discourse, encompasses biography, autobiography, memoirs, letters, diaries, journals, and even blogs and examines why the writing of life stories appeared somehow newly necessary and newly challenging for political discourse in the late seventeenth century. Walkden engages readers in a compelling discussion of what she terms biographical populism, arguing that the biographies of this period sought to replace political argument with life stories, thus conducting politics by another means. The modern biography, then, emerges after 1649 as a cultural weapon designed to reorient political discourse away from the analysis of public institutions and practices toward a less threatening, but similarly meaningful, conversation about the unfolding of an individual''s life in the realm of private experience.Unlike other recent studies, Walkden moves toward a consideration of widely consumed works-the Eikon Basilike, Izaak Walton''s Lives, John Aubrey''s Brief Lives, and Daniel Defoe''s Memoirs of a Cavalier-and gives particular attention to their complex engagement with that political and literary moment.

Original essays explore the concepts of materialism and embodiment as depicted by Milton in his fascinating portraits of humanity's place in the cosmos

"Essays discuss food and drink in Shakespeare's plays, reframing questions about cuisine, eating, and meals in early modern drama and emphasizing the aesthetic, communal, and philosophical aspects of food; many issues in Shakespeare studies are thus considered in terms of the cultural marker of culinary dynamics"--

Explores Milton's creative power to create a desire for a unified resolution that we are never meant to actually reach--at least in this world

Rooted in the interpretive field of ecocriticism, this collection asks what we can learn from representations of soil in early modern literature

Crosses the traditional medieval/early modern boundary to focus on reading Renaissance texts in light of earlier poetic forms

"For Donne scholars, this book brings a fresh body of legal scholarship to bear on Donne's early poetry and, conversely, for scholars working in the field of law and early modern literature, it reevaluates the links between law and satire"--

"This collection of essays devoted to Interregnum and Restoration poet Katherine Philips explores cultural poetics and the courtly coterie, innovation and influence in poetic and political form, and articulations of female friendship, homoeroticism, and retreat"--

"Offers new readings of Milton's major works, including Areopagitica, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, highlighting how Milton shifts the parlance of freedom and liberty from the arena of civic order to that of the individual conscience engaged in the process of choosing; this, in turn, invites readers to consider alternatives even to Milton's own positions"--

"The history of Milton on film, and Paradise Lost in particular, has been full of ambitious visions and dazzling failures, and this book explores all, from the earliest proto-cinematic inventions to the contemporary age of sprawling digital cinematography and Hollywood blockbusters"--

"Eleven essays explore the ways in which English drama reinforces, revises, resists, and reacts against the religious doctrine of the Reformation, and investigates how early modern drama was shaped by the religion of its producers and audiences"--

"In this comparative and hybrid study, Wilburn examines the presence and influence of John Milton in a diverse array of early African American writing such as Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Anna Julia Cooper, Sutton E. Griggs, and others"--

"Places Shakespeare's sonnets and plays, including Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, and Antony and Cleopatra, within the context of the literary history of praise poetry and explores the underlying influence of early modern skepticism on Shakespeare's writing"--

"Reassesses the literary invention of Margaret Cavendish -- the use she makes of other writers, her own various forms of writing, and the ways in which she creates her own literary persona -- to transform our understanding of Cavendish's considerable accomplishments and influence, including her revival of an expansive model of literary invention"--

"Readers of Paradise Lost have long been struck by two prominent aspects of the poem: its compelling depiction of Satan and its deep engagement with its literary tradition. Satan's Poetry brings these two issues together to respond to the resurgent interest in Milton's Satan by examining the origins of conflict and ambiguity in Paradise Lost"--

"Twelve essays by esteemed Milton scholars offer fresh perspectives on the significance of close reading for Milton criticism, examining how close reading may function as an act of recovery, an attempt to close the gap between past and present, or as an act of repair that uses the past to reenvision a ruined present"--Provided by publisher.