This book offers an analysis of paratextual infrastructures in editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and shows how paratexts functioned as important instruments for publishers and commentators to influence readers of this ancient text.

In Ovid and the Cultural Politics of Early Modern England, Liz Oakley-Brown considers English versions of the Metamorphoses - a poem concerned with translation and transformation on a multiplicity of levels - as important sites of social and historical difference from the fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. Through the exploration of a range of canonical and marginal texts, from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus to women's embroideries of Ovidian myths, Oakley-Brown argues that translation is central to the construction of national and gendered identities.

This volume examines how and why many early modern pictures operate in an ekphrastic mode.

Calvinism has been associated with distinctive literary cultures, with republican, liberal and participatory political cultures, with cultures of violence and vandalism, enlightened cultures, cultures of social discipline, secular cultures, and with the emergence of capitalism. Recognizing that Reformed Protestantism did not develop as a uniform tradition, this book assesses the complex character and impact of Calvinism in early modern Europe.

Between 1600 and 1800 newspapers and periodicals moved to the centre of British culture and society. This volume offers a series of perspectives on the developing relations between news, its material forms, gender, advertising, drama, medicine, national identity, the book trade and public opinion.

Early modern audiences, readerships, and viewerships were not homogenous. Differences in status, education, language, wealth, and experience (to name only a few variables) could influence how a group of people, or a particular person, received and made sense of sermons, public proclamations, dramatic and musical performances, images, objects, and spaces. The ways in which each of these were framed and executed could have a serious impact on their relevance and effectiveness. The chapters in this volume explore the ways in which authors, poets, artists, preachers, theologians, playwrights, and performers took account of and encoded pluriform potential audiences, readers, and viewers in their works, and how these varied parties encountered and responded to these works. The contributors here investigate these complex interactions through a variety of critical and methodological lenses.

Introduction: Early Modern Paratexts to Ovid's Metamorphoses -- The Title Page: Creating Commercial Credibility -- The Front Matter: Responses to Criticism of Ovid -- The Commentary: Negotiating Ovid's Dangerous Side -- The Index: A Filtering and Framing Device -- Paratextual Interaction: Two Case Studies -- Conclusion -- Appendix 1: Bibliography of Editions of Ovid's Metamorphoses Printed in the Low Countries (1479-1700) --Appendix 2: List of Library Abbreviations.