Written by various experts in the field, this volume of thirteen original essays explores some of the most significant theoretical and practical fault lines and controversies in seventeenth-century English literature. The turn into the twenty-first century is an appropriate time to take stock of the state of the field, and, as part of that stocktaking, the need arises to assess both where literary study of the early modern period has been and where it might desirably go. Hence, many of the essays in this collection look both backward and forward. They chart the changes in the field over the past half century, while also looking forward to more change in the future.

Theoretically informed scholarship on early modern English utopian literature has largely focused on Marxist interpretation of these texts in an attempt to characterize them as proto- Marxist. The present volume instead focuses on subjectivity in early modern English utopian writing by using these texts as case studies to explore intersections of the thought of Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault. Both Lacan and Foucault moved back and forth between structuralist and post-structuralist intellectual trends and ultimately both defy strict categorization into either camp. Although numerous studies have appeared that compare Lacan’s and Foucault’s thought, there have been relatively few applications of their thought together onto literature. By applying the thought of both theorists, who were not literary critics, to readings of early modern English utopian literature, this study will, on the one hand, describe the formation of utopian subjectivity that is both psychoanalytically (Oedipal and pre-Oedipal) and socially constructed, and, on the other hand, demonstrate new ways in which the thought of Lacan and Foucault inform and complement each other when applied to literary texts. The utopian subject is a malleable subject, a subject whose linguistic, psychoanalytical subjectivity determines the extent to which environmental and social factors manifest in an identity that moves among Lacan’s Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real.

The Cambridge Companion to John Donne introduces students (undergraduate and graduate) to the range, brilliance, and complexity of John Donne. Sixteen essays, written by an international array of leading scholars and critics, cover Donne's poetry (erotic, satirical, devotional) and his prose (including his Sermons and occasional letters). Providing readings of his texts and also fully situating them in the historical and cultural context of early modern England, these essays offer the most up-to-date scholarship and introduce students to the current thinking and debates about Donne, while providing tools for students to read Donne with greater understanding and enjoyment. Special features include a chronology; a short biography; essays on political and religious contexts; an essay on the experience of reading his lyrics; a meditation on Donne by the contemporary novelist A. S. Byatt; and an extensive bibliography of editions and criticism.

A maverick in her own time, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) was dismissed for three centuries as an eccentric crank. Yet the past few decades have witnessed a true renaissance in Cavendish studies, as scholars from diverse academic disciplines produce books, articles and theses on every aspect of her oeuvre. Cavendish's literary creations hold a wide appeal for modern readers because of her talent for thinking outside the rigid box that delimited the hierarchies of class, race and gender in seventeenth-century Europe. In so doing, she challenged the ultimate building blocks of early modern society, whether the tenets of Christianity, the social and political imperatives of patriarchy, or the arrogant claims of the new Baconian science. At the same time, Cavendish offers keen insights into current social issues. Her works have become a springboard for critical discourse on such topics as the nature of gender difference and the role of science in human life. Sara Mendelson's aim in compiling this volume is to convey to readers some idea of the scope and variety of scholarship on Cavendish, not only in terms of dominant themes, but of critical controversies and intriguing new pathways for investigation.

This book explores literary culture in England between 1630 and 1700, focusing on connections between material, epistemic, and political conditions of literary writing and reading. In a number of case studies and close readings, it presents the seventeenth century as a period of change that saw a fundamental shift towards a new cultural configuration: neoclassicism. This shift affected a wide array of social practices and institutions, from poetry to politics and from epistemology to civility.

In Teaching Predestination , David H. Kranendonk focuses on the ministry of an early seventeenth-century Puritan-leaning theologian, Elnathan Parr (1577–1622). Although relatively unknown today, Parr’s works were popular in his own day. Kranendonk’s survey contributes a nuanced picture of this English Reformed pastor and demonstrates that Parr’s scholastic development of predestination, coupled with his pastoral concern for the salvation and edification of his hearers, resists the caricature of Reformed Scholasticism as being a philosophically speculative system. Here one sees the practical use of predestination for the care of souls as Parr and others aimed to help increase the faith and joy of God’s people. Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Elnathan Parr’s Life and Ministry 3. Elnathan Parr’s Principles of Preaching 4. Elnathan Parr’s Exposition of Romans 5. Elnathan Parr’s Grounds of Divinity

The first edited collection of scholarly essays to focus exclusively on An Collins, this volume examines the significance of an important religious and political poet from seventeenth-century England. The book celebrates Collins’s writing within her own time and ours through a comprehensive assessment of her poetics, literary, religious and political contexts, critical reception, and scholarly tradition. An Collins and the Historical Imagination engages with the complete arc of research and interpretation concerning Collins’s poetry from 1653 to the present. The volume defines the center and circumference of Collins scholarship for twenty-first century readers. The book’s thematically linked chapters and appendices provide a multifaceted investigation of An Collins’s writing, religious and political milieu, and literary legacy within her time and ours.