Your Search Results

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2023

        A progressive education?

        by Laura Tisdall

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2022

        The early modern English sonnet

        Ever in motion

        by Laetitia Sansonetti, Rémi Vuillemin, Enrica Zanin

        This volume questions and qualifies commonly accepted assumptions about the early modern English sonnet: that it was a strictly codified form, most often organised in sequences, which only emerged at the very end of the sixteenth century and declined as fast as it had bloomed, and that minor poets merely participated in the sonnet fashion by replicating established conventions. Drawing from book history and relying on close reading and textual criticism, this collection offers a more nuanced account of the history of the sonnet. It discusses how sonnets were written, published and received in England as compared to mainland Europe, and explores the works of major (Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser) and minor (Barnes, Harvey) poets alike. Reflecting on current editorial practices, it also provides the first modern edition of an early seventeenth-century Elizabethan miscellany including sonnets presumably by Sidney and Spenser.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2025

        Early modern drama and the theatre of war

        Militarism, conflict and disruption in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries

        by Bronwen Price, Hilary Hinds

        This volume explores the disruptive effects of militarism, war and social unrest in early modern drama. Engaging with Simon Barker's seminal work on dramatic representations of war and militarism, contributors highlight what often lies hidden beneath the surface of martial narratives, treating them as formative interventions in contemporary discourses, whether in justifying war, excluding dissident voices or shaping cultural identities. Discussions include new examinations of militarism, the figure of the soldier and early modern theories of war in Shakespearean tragedy, history and comedy, alongside antimasque and dramatic satire by lesser-known playwrights. The essays investigate how ideas of war underpin emerging concepts of gender, leadership, marriage and the family, as well as the continuing mobilisation of Shakespearean drama in the context of modern armed conflict. Together, they offer rich new contributions to the current lively critical debates on this topic.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2025

        Slave trading in the Early Middle Ages

        Long-distance connections in northern and east central Europe

        by Janel M. Fontaine

        This book examines slave trading in northern and eastern central Europe from the seventh century through the eleventh century, tracing its growth, climax, and decline. Demand from the Islamic world in the ninth and tenth centuries prompted changes in warfare, trade logistics, and administrative responses to slavery in the slaving zones centred on the British Isles and the Czech lands. This study establishes slave trading as a core driver of connectivity and presents a model for this practice in politically fragmented areas of Europe.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        July 2021

        Old Fortunatus

        By Thomas Dekker

        by David McInnis

        With its fantasy of magical travel and inexhaustible riches, Thomas Dekker's Old Fortunatus is the quintessential early modern journeying play. The adventures of Fortunatus and his sons, aided by a magical purse and wishing-hat, offers the period's most overt celebration of the pleasures of travel, as well as a sustained critique of the dangers of intemperance and prodigality. Written following a period of financial difficulty for Dekker, the play is also notable for its fascination with the symbolic, mercantile and ethical uses of gold. This Revels Plays edition is the first fully annotated, single-volume critical edition of Old Fortunatus. It offers scholarly discussion of the play's performance and textual history, including attention to the German version printed and performed in the early seventeenth century. It provides a long overdue critical reappraisal of this unjustly neglected play.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2021

        The daring muse of the early Stuart funeral elegy

        by James Doelman

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2026

        What's in a name?

        How historians know Shakespeare was Shakespeare

        by Susan Dwyer Amussen

        A compelling tour of Shakespeare's England that makes a powerful contribution to the 'authorship question'. How do we know Shakespeare was Shakespeare? Could a glover's son who left school at fifteen really be the author behind such masterpieces as Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest? Yes! says historian Susan Amussen. She transports readers back to early modern England, to travel the path that carried William Shakespeare from humble origins in Stratford to literary greatness on the London stage. This was a society undergoing rapid change. Grammar schools made education in Latin and Greek available to commoners, while touring players brought the latest dramatic productions to the masses. And in London, a metropolis filled with European visitors, ordinary people had the opportunity to see courtly life up close. No serious historian doubts that Shakespeare was the author of the plays that bear his name. Susan Amussen shares what they know: that Shakespeare's England was a complex and cosmopolitan place, with everything a talented young playwright needed to develop his craft and furnish his imagination.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2013

        The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court

        by Edited by Jayne Archer, Elizabeth Goldring and Sarah Knight

        This is a collection of essays on an important but overlooked aspect of early modern English life: the artistic and intellectual patronage of the Inns of Court and their influence on religion, politics, education, rhetoric, and culture from the late fifteenth through the early eighteenth centuries. This period witnessed the height of the Inns' status as educational institutions: emerging from fairly informal associations in the fourteenth century, the Inns of Court in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had developed sophisticated curricula for their students, leading to their description in the early seventeenth century as England's 'third university'. Some of the most influential politicians, writers, and divines - as well as lawyers - of Tudor and Stuart England passed through the Inns: men such as Edward Hall, Richard Hooker, John Webster, John Selden, Edward Coke, William Lambarde, Francis Bacon, and John Donne. This is the first interdisciplinary publication on the early modern Inns of Court, bringing together scholarship in history, art history, literature, and drama. The book is lavishly illustrated and provides a unique collection of visual sources for the architecture, art, and gardens of the early modern Inns ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2012

        The Labour party and citizenship education

        Policy networks and the introduction of citizenship lessons in schools

        by Ben Kisby

        The Labour Party and citizenship education provides the definitive account of why and how Labour introduced citizenship education as a compulsory subject in the National Curriculum. Based on interviews with the key players, it contributes to our understanding of the role of ideas and policy networks in the policy process, to debates about the nature of New Labour as a political phenomenon, and addresses the significant and topical issues of political disaffection and community cohesion. This book is essential reading for academics and students of political science, public and social policy, education, contemporary history, and political theory. Written in an accessible style, it will also be of interest to the general reader concerned about issues of citizenship, political participation, disengagement and re-engagement. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        August 2002

        Sodomy in early modern Europe

        by Joseph Bergin, Tom Betteridge, Penny Roberts, Bill Naphy

        This fascinating collection of essays reflects closely the main areas of debate within gay historiography. For the last twenty years scholars have argued over the nature of early modern sodomy, responding in a number of different and contradictory ways. Questions addressed in the book include: was early modern sodomy the same as modern homosexuality? Were there homosexuals in early modern Europe? Did men who had sex with each other in this period regard their behaviour as determining their identity? What was the relationship between the grave sin of sodomy and the homoerotic images that fill Renaissance culture?. The volume includes essays on sodomy in English Protestant history writing, in Calvin's Geneva, in early modern Venice and the trial of sodomy in Germany. ;

      • Trusted Partner

      Subscribe to our

      newsletter