First published in 1990, this title provides a compendium of useful information for any reader of Donne to have at hand: crucial biographical material, historical contextualisation, and details about his life’s work. The intention throughout is to enhance understanding and appreciation, without being exhaustive. The major portion of the volume, in both importance and size, is ‘A Donne Dictionary’. Its entries are arranged alphabetically: they identify, describe and explain the most influential persons in Donne’s life and works, as well as places, characters, allusions, ideas, concepts, individual words, phrases and literary terms that are relevant to a rounded appreciation of his poetry and prose. A Jonne Donne Companion will prove invaluable for all students of English poetry and Anglican theology.

First published in 1998, this title provides for the reader of the renowned metaphysical poet and politician a valuable reference and resource volume. It is a compendium of useful information for any reader of Andrew Marvell, including crucial biographical material, historical contextualisation, and details about his life’s work. The intention throughout is to enhance understanding and appreciation, without being exhaustive. The major portion of the volume, in both importance and size, is ‘A Marvell Dictionary’. Its entries are arranged alphabetically: they identify, describe and explain the most influential persons in Marvell’s life and works, as well as places, characters, allusions, ideas, concepts, individual words, phrases and literary terms that are relevant to a rounded appreciation of his poetry and prose. An Andrew Marvell Companion will prove invaluable for all students of English poetry and seventeenth-century political history.

First published in 1995, this title provides the reader with a compendium of useful information for any reader of George Herbert to have at hand. It includes key biographical information, situates the poetry in its historical and cultural context, and, where appropriate, explains theological concepts and traditions which have a direct bearing on the verse. The aim throughout is to enhance understanding and appreciation, without being exhaustive. A George Herbert Companion will be of most use to general readers and undergraduate students coming to this poetry for the first time, and will interest students of Anglican Caroline theology and hymnology.

Lauren Robertson's original study shows that the theater of Shakespeare and his contemporaries responded to the crises of knowledge that roiled through early modern England by rendering them spectacular. Revealing the radical, exciting instability of the early modern theater's representational practices, Robertson uncovers the uncertainty that went to the heart of playgoing experience in this period. Doubt was not merely the purview of Hamlet and other onstage characters, but was in fact constitutive of spectators' imaginative participation in performance. Within a culture in the midst of extreme epistemological upheaval, the commercial theater licensed spectators' suspension among opposed possibilities, transforming dubiety itself into exuberantly enjoyable, spectacular show. Robertson shows that the playhouse was a site for the entertainment of uncertainty in a double sense: its pleasures made the very trial of unknowing possible.

Bringing together leading Jonson scholars, Ben Jonson and Posterity provides new insights into this remarkable writer's reception and legacy over four centuries. Jonson was recognised as the outstanding English writer of his day and has had a powerful influence on later generations, yet his reputation is one of the most multifaceted and conflicted for any writer of the early modern period. The volume brings together multiple critical perspectives, addressing book history, the practice of reading, theatrical influence and adaptation, the history of performance, cultural representation in portraiture, film, fiction, and anecdotes to interrogate Jonson's 'myth'. The collection will be of great interest to all Jonson scholars, as well as having a wider appeal among early modern literary scholars, theatre historians, and scholars interested in intertextuality and reception from the Renaissance to the present day.

This is a guide to the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature, charting some of the main features of literary language development and highlighting key language topics.

This handbook scrutinises the links between English literature and religion, specifically in the early modern period; the interactions between the two fields are explored through an examination of the literary impact the British church had on published work in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.