Literary studies: c 1400 to c 1600 Books

Book SynopsisGames and Theatre in Shakespeare's England brings together theories of play and game with theatre and performance to produce new understandings of the history and design of early modern English drama. Through literary analysis and embodied practice, an international team of distinguished scholars examines a wide range of games—from dicing to bowling to role-playing to videogames—to uncover their fascinating ramifications for the stage in Shakespeare’s era and our own. Foregrounding ludic elements challenges the traditional view of drama as principally mimesis, or imitation, revealing stageplays to be improvisational experiments and participatory explorations into the motive, means, and value of recreation. Delving into both canonical masterpieces and hidden gems, this innovative volume stakes a claim for play as the crucial link between games and early modern theatre, and for the early modern theatre as a critical site for unraveling the continued cultural significance and performative efficacy of gameplay today.Trade Review"This latest entry in the Cultures of Play, 1300–1700 series with Amsterdam University Press is essential reading for anyone studying, teaching, or interested in games then and now. … From beginning to end, the editors have gifted their readers with a thought-provoking collection that advances the study of early games with a stellar constellation of chapters. As Bishop, Bloom, and Lin state, ‘videogame culture today has come to resemble the improvisatory and participatory culture of theatregoing in early modern England’ (30), and their collection of essays is an important step toward understanding the interconnection between these two worlds and forms of play."- Mark Kaethler, Early Theatre ''The editors of Games and Theatre in Shakespeare's England have delivered a carefully curated volume that offers an evocative hermeneutical paradigm that changes supposedly settled critical assumptions as well as an impressively wide range of conversations and materials that will benefit students and teachers at all levels of education.'' - Kurt Schreyer, Renaissance Quarterly, 2023, 76(4) Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction (Tom Bishop, Gina Bloom, and Erika T. Lin) Part I 1. The Player’s Game: The Activity of the Player in Early Modern Drama (Stephen Purcell) 2. “The Madnes of Tenys” and the Commercialization of Pastimes in Early Tudor London (David Kathman) 3. The Roll of the Dice and the Whims of Fate in Sixteenth-Century Morality Drama (Katherine Steele Brokaw) 4. “The games afoote”: Playing, Preying and Projecting in Richard Brome’s The Court Beggar (Heather Hirschfeld) Part II 5. Playing with Paradoxes in Troilus and Cressida (Patricia Badir) 6. Bowling Alone, or The Whole Point of No Return (Paul Menzer) 7. Playing (in) the Streets: Games and Adaptation in The Merchant of Venice (Marissa Greenberg) Part III 8. The Moods of Gamification in The Tempest (Ellen MacKay) 9. Videogames and Hamlet: Experiencing Tragic Choice and Consequences (Rebecca Bushnell) 10. Shakespeare Videogames, Adaptation/Appropriation, and Collaborative Reception (Geoffrey Way) 11. Shakespeare, Game, and Play in Digital Pedagogical Shakespeare Games (Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Shawn DeSouza-Coelho) Epilogue: Field of Play: Gamifying Early Modern Theatre and Performance Studies (Natasha Korda) Index

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Book SynopsisTradition, translation, and transcription in Henrician verse functioned together in systems of communally created, coded position-taking. Understanding this system as an extensive network of production and reception in which women took on many roles allows for new readings of Henrician verse that emphasize the interpretive range available to contemporary reading and writing communities. This restoration demasculinizes our approach to Henrician verse not only through a more equitable consideration of gender’s functions in that social world, but also in de-emphasizing individualized self-fashioning or authorial intent in favor of an engagement with communal production and shared sociopolitical engagement. The creation in this system is not of a code, but of systems for coding and recognizing position-taking. These communal systems offer a site for the intersection of reader and writer, of transcriber and composer, and of King and courtier in a space that questions, creates, and troubles power in the Henrician court.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Early Verse Position-Taking in the Henrician Court A. The King’s Courtly Verse B. Skelton and Early Henrician Courtiers’ Position-Taking Traditions of Resistance and Verse Position-Taking A. Wyatt and Contextual Position-Taking B. Surrey and Self-Authorization Translation and the Position-Taking Verse Tradition A. Titles, Tottel’s, and Verse in Context B. Language Choices and Communal Position-Taking Practice Men’s and Women’s Approaches to Translation and Authority in the Late Henrician Court A. Surrey’s Aeneid B. Wyatt’s Psalms C. Parr and Hybridized Position-Taking D. Two Translations into Prose by Early Modern Englishwomen Elizabeth’s Miroir Jane Lumley’s Iphigeneia Transcription as Translation: Writing the Language of Manuscript Poetry A. Context and ‘Correctness’ in Manuscript Transcription B. Responsive Reading and Composition C. Forms and Dialogues Resistance and Unity in the Douglas-Howard Exchange A. The Epistolary Exchange B. Contextual Affect and Effect Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMaritime Musicians and Performers on Early Modern English Voyages aims to tell the full story of early English shipboard performers, who have been historically absent from conversations about English navigation, maritime culture, and economic expansion. Often described reductively in voyaging accounts as having one function, in fact maritime performers served many communicative tasks. Their lives were not only complex, but often contradictory. Though not high-ranking officers, neither were they lower-ranking mariners or sailors. They were influenced by a range of competing cultural practices, having spent time playing on both land and sea, and their roles required them to mediate parties using music, dance, and theatre as powerful forms of nonverbal communication. Their performances transcended and breached boundaries of language, rank, race, religion, and nationality, thereby upsetting conventional practices, improving shipboard and international relations, and ensuring the success of their voyages.Trade Review"This original and accessible book draws on archival sources and embraces social history, labor history, and the history of performance. The stories of these artists, actors, dancers, and musicians who are thrown together with common seafarers and how they are forced to (or are delighted to) navigate between the sailors’ rough ways and the courtly pretensions of their senior officers makes a striking new contribution to the history and sociology of shipboard life during the early modern period." - Colin Dewey, California State University Maritime Academy ''Seth’s method is to be expansive, considering as wide a range of performers — singers, musicians, dancers, play actors — as he can, and attempting as full a recapitulation of the lives of the performers as sources will allow. And it is his capacious conception of music and performance that makes this work unique; his chapters include not only the expected attention to military and civilian performers, as well as interest in the performative underpinnings of rituals and diplomatic entertainments; they also explore signaling work and the importance of nonverbal communication to early modern colonizers.''- Manushang N. Powell, Eighteenth-Century StudiesWinter 2024, V.57.2 Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: A Tale of Two Trumpeters Part One The Players 1. Naval Musicians 2. Civilian Performers, Professional and Amateur Part Two The Performances 3. Signalling and Communicating 4. Courtly Rituals and Casual Entertainments 5. Diplomacy and Trade Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe volume presents a wide-ranging investigation of the ways in which Petrarch’s legacy informed the relationship between visual and literary portraits in sixteenth-century Italy. Petrarch’s vast literary production influenced the intellectual framework in which new models of representation and self-representation developed during the Renaissance. His two sonnets on Laura’s portrait by Simone Martini and his ambivalent fascination with the illusionary power of portraiture in his Latin texts — such as the Secretum, the Familiares and De remediis utriusque fortune — constituted the theoretical reference for artists and writers alike. In a century dominated by the rhetorical comparison between art and literature (ut pictura poësis) and by the paragone debate, the interplay between Petrarch’s oeuvre, Petrarchism and portraiture shaped the discourse on the relationship between the sitters’ physical image and their inner life. The volume brings together diverse interdisciplinary contributions that explore the subject through a rich body of literary and visual sources.Table of Contents1. Introduction (Ilaria Bernocchi, Nicolò Morelli, Federica Pich) 2. Widows, Poetry, and Portraits. Livia Spinola and Francesca Turina on the Portraits of their Dead Husbands (Simone Monti) 3. In Medusa’s Eyes. Petrification and Marble Portraits in Late Sixteenth-Century Poetry (Martina Dal Cengio) 4. The Portrait of the Ideal Woman. Petrarch in Conduct Literature Texts for and about Women (Francesco Lucioli) 5. Anti-Petrarchist Portraiture or a Different Petrarchist Portraiture? A Literary Outlook on Some Non-Idealised Female Sitters in Renaissance Art (Diletta Gamberini) 6. The Shadow of Petrarch. Benedetto Varchi and Agnolo Bronzino on Portraiture (Antonio Geremicca) 7. Double Portraits of Petrarch and Laura in Print (c. 1544–1600) (Gemma Cornetti) 8. Double Portraits and Sonnet Diptychs. Figurative Allusions in the Encomiastic Poetry of the Sixteenth Century (Muriel M.S. Barbero) 9. Images of Women from Subject to Frame in Printed Portrait Books (Susan Gaylard) Index

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Book SynopsisThis study of ludic literary society in sixteenth-century France addresses Italianate practices of philosophical and literary sociability as they took root there. It asserts that entertainment activities of women-led circles illustrate the richly complex precursors of the seventeenth-century salons. Notions from the philosophy of play, such as those developed by Johan Huizinga, Eugen Fink, and Roger Caillois, who argue that play is critically intertwined with the development of society, provide a theoretical path across these periods of women’s engagement in literary culture. The barrister Estienne Pasquier, whose voluminous network of literary and legal connections permitted him entry into the society of such women, acts as an eyewitness to sixteenth-century circles. Ultimately, we see that the ludic activities in such society produced powerful influences that extended beyond the confines of the groups in question to shape ideas, attitudes, and activities—such as those of the salon cultural norms to come.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on the Text List of Illustrations Introduction: Women, Entertainment, and Precursors of the French Salon, 1532-1615 Chapter One: At Play in Italy and France: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Social Continuities Chapter Two: Marie-Catherine de Pierrevive and the Dames des Roches: Proto-Salon Entertainment in Lyon and Poitiers Chapter Three: Antoinette de Loynes and Madeleine de l’Aubespine: Entertainment among the Parisian Noblesse de robe Chapter Four: Claude-Catherine de Clermont: Amusement and Escapism among the Noblesse d’épée and Royal Milieu Chapter Five: Marguerite de Valois and Proto-Précieuse Taste Chapter Six: L’Histoire de La Chiaramonte: A Divertissement for the Circle of Marguerite de Valois Conclusion: Sixteenth-Century Société Mondaine and the Persistence of Entertainment Practices Appendix: Estienne Pasquier and His Social Network Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisDuring his lifetime and the four centuries following his death, King Edward II (1307-1327) acquired a reputation for having engaged in sexual and romantic relationships with his male favourites, and having been murdered by penetration with a red-hot spit. This book provides the first account of how this reputation developed, providing new insights into the processes and priorities that shaped narratives of sexual transgression in medieval and early modern England. In doing so, it analyses the changing vocabulary of sexual transgression in English, Latin and French; the conditions that created space for sympathetic depictions of same-sex love; and the use of medieval history in early modern political polemic. It also focuses, in particular, on the cultural impact of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (c.1591-92). Through such close readings of poetry and drama, alongside chronicle accounts and political pamphlets, it demonstrates that Edward’s medieval and early modern afterlife was significantly shaped by the influence of literary texts and techniques. A ‘literary transformation’ of historiographical methodology is, it argues, an apposite response to the factors that shaped medieval and early modern narratives of the past.Trade Review"[..] Heyam’s careful analysis of sources (also summarized in a detailed, critically annotated appendix) reveals a continuous interplay between literary and historical discourse, united by their manipulation of genre and their manifest appeal to a reading public. The Reputation of Edward II masterfully delineates how so many pre modern writers sought to answer the question—who was Edward II?—and to decipher what he means for us now."- Graham N. Drake, Speculum Vol. 97, No. 3 (July 2022) "[...] a thorough and ambitious study that makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the development of Edward II’s reputation over the centuries, the evolution of vocabulary used to discuss sexual transgression, and the writing of medieval history in early modern England." - Kathryn Warner, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 61, Iss. 3Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Life of an 'unfortunate king' Writing Edward II's narrative Reading Edward II's narrative Structure Chapter 1 - Riot, Sodomy, and Minions: The Ambiguous Discourse of Sexual Transgression Introduction Riot Sodomy Minions Conclusion Chapter 2 - From Goats to Ganymedes: The Development of Edward II's Sexual Reputation Introduction Lechery and goats Sexualized stock phrases Ganymede The role of Marlowe Conclusion Chapter 3 - Edward II and Piers Gaveston: Brothers, Friends, Lovers Introduction Brotherhood and friendship Romanticizing Edward and Gaveston Conclusion Chapter 4 - 'Is it not strange that he is thus bewitch'd?': Edward II's Agency and Culpability Introduction Unsuitable companions Agency in attraction Political agency Evil counsel - or evil nature? Conclusion Chapter 5 - Edward II as Political Exemplum Introduction Polemical invocations Other political allusions Conclusion Chapter 6 - 'No escape now from a life full of suffering': Edward II's Sensational Fall Introduction Deposition Imprisonment Edward's story as de casibus narrative Conclusion Chapter 7 - Beyond Sexual Mimesis: The Penetrative Murder of Edward II Introduction Development of a consensus Precedents for penetration Sexual mimesis Pain and torture Marlowe's murder scene Conclusion Conclusion: The Literary Transformation of History Introduction Illuminating Marlowe Literary transformations Appendix: Accounts of and allusions to Edward II's reign, composed 1305-1697 Introduction Index

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