Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham
Editor: Andrew Lynch and Anne Scott
Date Of Publication: Jul 2008
Isbn13: 9781847186102
Isbn: 1-84718-610-6
Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context is a stimulating refereed collection of new work dedicated to Emeritus Professor Christopher Wortham of The University of Western Australia. The essays provide a rich context for the interdisciplinary study of the English Renaissance, from its medieval antecedents to its modern afterlife on stage and screen. Their up-to-date engagement with many scholarly fields - art and iconography, cartography, cultural and social history, literature, politics, theatre, and film - will ensure that this book makes a valuable contribution to contemporary Renaissance studies, with a special interest for those researching and teaching English literature and drama.

The nineteen contributors include distinguished Renaissance scholars such as Ann Blake, Graham Bradshaw, Alan Brissenden, Conal Condren, Joost Daalder, Heather Dubrow, Philippa Kelly, Anthony Miller, Kay Gililand Stevenson, Robert White, and Lawrence Wright. Work on Shakespeare forms the core of this coherent collection. There are also significant essays on Magnificence, Donne, Marlowe, A Yorkshire Tragedy, Jonson, Marvell, the Ferrars of Little Gidding, and female conduct literature.

hardbound with dust jacket; xii+353 pp; 18 b/w illustrations.

Andrew Lynch is Associate Professor of English and Cultural Studies, and Chair of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at The University of Western Australia. His publications include Malory's Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (D. S. Brewer) and numerous articles and chapters on medieval, medievalist and Australian literature, including forthcoming contributions to the Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend and the Blackwell Companion to Arthurian Literature. With Anne M. Scott he edits Parergon, the Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. He currently holds an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant with a team investigating Medievalism in Australian Cultural Memory.

Anne M. Scott is Convenor of the Australian Research Council Network for Early European Research, and an honorary research fellow in English and Cultural Studies at The University of Western Australia. Her field of research is in fourteenth-century English literature, on which she has published a number of articles and the monograph, Piers Plowman and the Poor (Four Courts Press, 2004). Work is currently in progress for a book on the iconography and representations of poverty in medieval English literature and art. Among other literary diversions, she is co-editor, with Andrew Lynch, of Parergon, now available through Project Muse.

“Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham offers the reader an exciting range of probing enquiries into early modern texts as artworks and cultural documents. Firmly anchored in fresh approaches to canonical authors such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Donne and Marvell, this illustrated collection is conceptually expansive, drawing in more minor works as it reaches back to medieval drama and classical precedents and forward to film and the novel. As a showcase of primarily Australian, yet also global, scholarship from established and newer researchers, Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context pursues fascinating textual minutiae and raises provocative, larger questions about the period. These contributions, bookended with reflections on an impressive academic life, make the volume a worthy tribute to Professor Wortham.”

Dr Liam Semler, Department of English, University of Sydney

“Prismatically reflecting the many and varied interests of the scholar it celebrates, Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham will delight all those interested in the exploration of early modern literature and culture. Its contributors have obviously been provoked by the occasion to produce of their best, and the essays collected here crackle with critical energy. Tudor drama, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Donne and Marvell all feature in discussions rich in insights and original contextualization; contemporary cartography, cosmology and mythology are explored; women's lives and authorship are discussed in fascinating detail; and essays on the legacy of 'the Shakespearean moment' in our own contemporary culture in creative writing and film point to the enduring power and interest of the poetry and drama celebrated here. A worthy Festschrift, and a rich feast indeed.”

Dr Ronald Bedford, School of Arts, University of New England

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)