The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature: 1485-1603 (Oxford Handbooks) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199205884 ISBN 13: 9780199205882

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2009

Synopsis

This is the first major collection of essays to look at the literature of the entire Tudor period, from the reign of Henry VII to death of Elizabeth I. It pays particularly attention to the years before 1580. Those decades saw, amongst other things, the establishment of print culture and growth of a reading public; the various phases of the English Reformation and process of political centralization that enabled and accompanied them; the increasing emulation of Continental and classical literatures under the influence of humanism; the self-conscious emergence of English as a literary language and determined creation of a native literary canon; the beginnings of English empire and the consolidation of a sense of nationhood. However, study of Tudor literature prior to 1580 is not only of worth as a context, or foundation, for an Elizabethan 'golden age'. As this much-needed volume will show, it is also of artistic, intellectual, and cultural merit in its own right. Written by experts from Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom, the forty-five chapters in The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Literature recover some of the distinctive voices of sixteenth-century writing, its energy, variety, and inventiveness. As well as essays on well-known writers, such as Philip Sidney or Thomas Wyatt, the volume contains the first extensive treatment in print of some of the Tudor era's most original voices.

About this title

Review:

In their readiness to challenge assumptions, to re-think theoretical paradigms, and to hold possibilities, alternatives, and contradictions productively in play, these and many other essays in this volume do justice to the dense and complex literature of this period, modelling that literatures best features its ambition, polemic, and debate in its own pages and, in that respect, providing a model to us all. (Catherine Bates, Notes and Queries)

All of the essays are informed by clear and careful close readings which exemplify and support the arguments presented. They do this in such a way as to make the arguments not only compelling, but also accessible to the reader for whom the texts discussed are unfamiliar. This book is thus in the very best sense a handbook - it will offer inspiring and useful support to the reader of the primary texts of Tudor literature. It will be useful to student and lecturer alike in providing introductory material to new texts, up-to-date summaries of extant scholarship, and full bibliography. (Elisabeth Dutton, English)

The first major collection to survey literature from Henry VII to Elizabeth I, this book offers a wealth of information... All the essays are of exceptionally high caliber (A. Castaldo, Choice)

About the Author:

Mike Pincombe is Professor of Tudor and Elizabethan Literature at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne; he convened the Tudor Symposium between 1998 and 2009. He has written books on John Lyly (1996) and Elizabethan Humanism (2001), and also essays and articles on a range of mid-Tudor topics. He is presently working on William Baldwin and A Mirror for Magistrates. Cathy Shrank is Reader in Tudor Literature at the University of Sheffield. Her publications include Writing the Nation in Reformation England, 1530-1580 (Oxford University Press, 2004, 2006) and essays and articles on various Tudor and Shakespearean topics, including language reform, civility, travel writing, cheap print, and mid-sixteenth-century sonnets. She is currently working on an edition of Shakespeare's poems and a monograph on non-dramatic dialogue in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0199205884
• ISBN 13: 9780199205882
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 862
• Editor: Pincombe Mike, Shrank Cathy