Neo-Historicism: Studies in Renaissance Literature, History and Politics (Studies in Renaissance Literature, 5)

Essays on English Renaissance culture make a major contribution to the debate on historical method. For nearly two decades, Renaissance literary scholarship has been dominated by various forms of postmodern criticism which claim to expose the simplistic methodology of `traditional' criticism and to offer a more sophisticated view of the relation between literature and history; however, this new approach, although making scholars more alert to the political significance of literary texts, has been widely criticised on both methodological and theoretical grounds. The revisionist essays collected in this volume make a major contribution to the modern debate on historical method, approaching Renaissance culture from different gender perspectives and a variety of political standpoints, but all sharing an interest in the interdisciplinary study of the past.ROBIN HEADLAM WELLS is Professor of English, University of Surrey Roehampton; GLENN BURGESS is Professor of History, University of Hull; ROWLAND WYMER is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Hull. Contributors: GLENN BURGESS, STANLEY STEWART, BLAIR WORDEN, ANDREW GURR, KATHARINE EISAMAN MAUS, ROWLAND WYMER, GRAHAM PARRY, MALCOLM SMUTS, STEVEN ZWICKER, HEATHER DUBROW, ROBIN HEADLAM WELLS. CONTENTS 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 8 CONTRIBUTORS 9 PREFACE 12 Introduction 14 Historicising the Renaissance 42 1. The `Historical Turn' and the Political Culture of Early Modern England: Towards a Postmodern History? 44 2. `New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed 61 The Politics of Theatre 82 3. Ben Jonson and the Monarchy 84 4. Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing 104 5. Inwardness and Spectatorship in Early Modern England 124 6. Jacobean Pageant or Elizabethan Fin-de-SieÁcle? The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy 151 Making History 166 7. Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts 168 8. Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical 192 9. The Politics of Affectivity in Early Modern England 212 Shakespeare in Context 230 10. `In thievish ways': Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Early Modern Culture 232 11. An Orpheus for a Hercules: Virtue Redefined in The Tempest 253 INDEX 276

essays On English Renaissance Culture Make A Major Contribution To The Debate On Historical Method.