Sir John Denham (1614/15–1669) Reassessed shines new light on a singular, colourful yet elusive figure of seventeenth-century English letters. Despite his influence as a poet, wit, courtier, exile, politician and surveyor of the king's works, Denham, remains a neglected figure. The original essays in this interdisciplinary collection provide the sustained modern critical attention his life and work merit. The book both examines for the first time and reassesses important features of Denham's life and reputations: his friendship circles, his role as a political satirist, his religious inclinations, his playwriting years, and the personal, political and literary repercussions of his long exile; and offers fresh interpretations of his poetic magnum opus, Coopers Hill. Building on the recent resurgence of scholarly interest in royalists and royalism, as well as on Restoration literature and drama, this lively account of Denham's influence questions assumptions about neatly demarcated seventeenth-century chronological, geographic and literary boundaries. What emerges is a complex man who subverts as well as reinforces conventional characterisations of court wit, gambler and dilettante.

Borderlands, boundaries and frontiers are crucibles for diverse cultures and multiple alternative histories. Nowhere is this truer than in the debateable lands between nation states in what is commonly known as the British Isles. This collection takes the reader on an imaginative journey inside the borders, offering a fresh perspective on the liminality of these porous and contested terrains and the liminal peoples therein. Implicitly or explicitly, the contributors to this volume, in one way or another acknowledge that the term ‘borderland’ is imprecise, ambiguous and never neutral, and due to its liminal status, a crucible for multiple and competing identities. As the essays in this collection show, these borders don’t have to be geographical, but can extend to any cultural, psychic or social terrain which exists beyond or between accepted categories, power structures, nations or states. This collection concerns itself with Borders Theory in its multifarious manifestations from pre-history to the present day. Border Crossings draws together a number of key researchers in their respective fields and enables a dialogue between different disciplines and theoreticians. More generally, in its disciplinary and theoretical scope, the collection links with a number of other works, whilst its focus on England, Ireland and Scotland maintains its distinctiveness and addresses an area of comparative critical neglect.