Literature, Politics and Law in Renaissance England (Language, Discourse, Society)

This collection features the work of both established and up-and-coming scholars in the UK and US, with contributors including Peter Goodrich, Lorna Hutson, Erica Sheen and David Colclough studying the period of the English Renaissance from the 1520s to the 1660s. This wide-ranging study, working on the edge of new historicism as well as book history, covers topics such as libel/slander and literary debate, legal textual production, authorship and the politics of authorial attribution and theater and the law. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 List of Illustrations......Page 7 Notes on Contributors......Page 8 1 Introduction: Renaissance, Law and Literature......Page 10 2 Amici curiae: Lawful Manhood and Other Juristic Performances in Renaissance England......Page 32 3 Instigating Treason: the Life and Death of Henry Cuffe, Secretary......Page 59 4 ‘Unmanly Indignities’: Adultery, Evidence and Judgement in Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness......Page 80 5 ‘She has that in her belly will dry up your ink’: Femininity as Challenge in the ‘Equitable Drama’ of John Webster......Page 109 6 Renaissance Tool Abuse and the Legal History of the Sudden......Page 130 7 Taking Liberties: George Wither’s A Satyre, Libel and the Law......Page 155 8 Freedom of Speech, Libel and the Law in Early Stuart England......Page 179 9 John Selden among the Quakers: Antifeminism and the Seventeenth-Century Tithes Controversy......Page 198 10 Martyrdom in a Merchant World: Law and Martyrdom in the Restoration Memoirs of Elizabeth Jekyll and Mary Love......Page 218 Index......Page 245 "This collection is the first of its kind to attempt a more detailed analysis of the complex interdependencies of legal and literary discourses in Renaissance England. The essays in this collection approach key topics in current debates in Renaissance literature and culture from new and dazzlingly illuminating vantage points. Featuring here are essays on the unconscious spiritual repressions of the English common law; relations between authorship, censorship, treason and the common law; collusions between law and masculinity in theatre; legal discourses of homicide and sudden anger; women's voices in the revolutionary discourses of legal citizenship."--Jacket This collection features the work of both established and up-and-coming scholars in the UK and US, with contributors including Peter Goodrich, Lorna Hutson, Erica Sheen and David Colclough studying the period of the English Renaissance from the 1520s to the 1660s. This wide-ranging study, working on the edge of new historicism as well as book history, covers topics such as libel/slander and literary debate, legal textual production, authorship and the politics of authorial attribution and theatre and the law.