Description
Book SynopsisThis wide-ranging collection of essays, written by leading specialists, furnishes previously unpublished evidence of France's role and importance in the early modern English literary and dramatic fields. Its chapter-length introduction offers an up-to-date critical presentation of the issues involved: representation, cultural identity, the construction of otherness, Frenchness, and the social and cultural dynamics of theater. The essays in the five sections of the book continue the debate with a series of in-depth studies touching on important critical themes such as intertextuality; old and new historicisms; language, semiotics, and nationhood; imagined geographies; and stereotypes and social satire. The book will appeal to students and specialists of Renaissance literature, to scholars working on the construction of national identity and will be required reading for anyone interested in cultural exchange or comparative literature.
Trade ReviewRepresenting France and the French presents a provocative and panoramic introduction to the many ways the French figure in early modern drama…. The collection as a whole makes a valuable contribution to an area of scholarship that has been neglected. The very range of topics here and the many uses to which ideas about France and French are put by early modern dramatists suggest wide new areas of research and the collection demonstrates that the endeavour is a worthwhile one. * Cahiers Élisabéthains *
