As headmaster of two of London's well-known grammar schools, Mulcaster earned a national reputation in education.

As headmaster of two of London's well-known grammar schools, Mulcaster earned a national reputation in education.

Writing the Nation in Reformation England offers a major re-evaluation of English writing between 1530 and 1580. Studying authors such as Andrew Borde, John Leland, William Thomas, Thomas Smith, and Thomas Wilson, Cathy Shrank highlights the significance of these decades to the formation of English nationhood and examines the impact of the break with Rome on the development of a national language, literary style, and canon. As well as demonstrating the close relationship between literary culture and English identities, it reinvests Tudor writers with a sense of agency. As authors, counsellors, and thinkers they were active citizens participating within, and helping to shape, a national community. In the process, their works were also used to project an image of themselves as authors, playing - and fitted to play - their part in the public domain. In showing how these writers engaged with, and promoted, concepts of national identity, the book makes a significant contribution to our broader understanding of the early modern period, demonstrating that nationhood was not a later Elizabethan phenomenon, and that the Reformation had an immediate impact on English culture, before England emerged as a 'Protestant' nation.

Leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic explore translations as a key agent of change in the wider religious, cultural and literary developments of the early modern period, and restore translation to the centre of our understanding of the literature and history of Tudor England.

Ovid's Changing Worlds looks at the four most important English imitations of the Metamorphoses in the English Renaissance: the translations of Arthur Golding and George Sandys, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion. It sheds new light on dealings with the classics in the period and shows that the emergence of English literature was a complex and fascinating process.

Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson: Laureations brings together new essays by leading literary scholars of the British and European middle ages and early modern period who have been influenced by the groundbreaking scholarship of Richard Helgerson. The contributors evince the ongoing impact of Helgerson's work in critical debates including those of nationalism, formal analysis, and literary careerism.

This volume explores the relationship between the emphasis on performance in Elizabethan humanist education and the flourishing of literary brilliance around the turn of the sixteenth century. This study asks us what lessons we can learn today from Shakespeare’s Latin grammar school. What were the cognitive benefits of an education so deeply rooted in what Demosthenes and Quintilian called "actio"—acting? Because of the vast difference between educational practice then and now, we have not often followed one essential thread: the focus on performance. This study examines the connections relevant to the education offered in schools today. This book will be of great interest to teachers, scholars, and administrators in performing arts and education.