The phrase 'cultural materialism' names an approach to cultural analysis that interrogates the socio-economic conditions within which artefacts are produced as well as their participation in other ideological and material fields of culture. Disciplines that have traditionally studied cultural artefacts like literature and painting have increasingly focused on the material production and ideological operation of objects once thought of in idealized or purely aesthetic terms. By the same token, historians - whose work, of necessity, has always tended to deal with the material traces of culture - have increasingly been willing to consider the social and ideological importance of art. The increasing popularity of this cultural studies approach to the past has in turn spurred investigation into other kinds of materiality. Recent historical and literary scholarship, for example, has become increasingly aware of the ways in which the lived materiality of the human body informs a range of cultural discourses.

Sources are the raw material of History, but whereas the written word has traditionally been seen as the principal source, historians now recognize the value of sources beyond text. In this new edition of History and Material Culture, contributors consider a range of objects – from an eighteenth-century bed curtain to a twenty-first-century shopping trolley – which can help historians develop new interpretations and new knowledge about the past. Containing two new chapters on healing objects in East Africa and the shopping trolley in the social world, this book examines a variety of material sources from around the globe and across centuries to assess how such sources can be used to study the distant and the recent past. In a revised introduction, Karen Harvey discusses some of the principal issues raised when historians use material culture, particularly in the context of 'the material turn', and suggests some initial steps for those unfamiliar with these kinds of sources. While the sources are discussed from interdisciplinary perspectives, the emphasis of the book is on what historians stand to gain from using material culture, as well as what historians have to offer the broader study of material culture. Clearly written and accessible, this book is the ideal introduction to the opportunities and challenges of researching material culture, and is essential reading for all students of historical theory and method.

An examination of the way in which the material world is depicted in The Faerie Queene. This book provides a radical reassessment of Spenserian allegory, in particular of The Faerie Queene, in the light of contemporary historical and theoretical interests in space and material culture. It explores the ambiguous and fluctuating attention to materiality, objects, and substance in the poetics of The Faerie Queene, and discusses the way that Spenser's creation of allegorical meaning makes use of this materiality, and transforms it.It suggests further that a critical engagement with materiality (which has been so important to the recent study of early modern drama) must come, in the case of allegorical narrative, through a study of narrative and physical space, and in this context it goes on to provide a reading of the spatial dimensions of the poem - quests and battles, forests, castles and hovels - and the spatial characteristics of Spenser's other writings. The book reaffirms theneed to place Spenser in his historical contexts - philosophical and scientific, military and architectural - in early modern England, Ireland and Europe, but also provides a critical reassessment of this literary historicism. Dr CHRISTOPHER BURLINSON is a Research Fellow in English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

A follow-up publication to the Handbook of Medieval Studies, this new reference work turns to a different focus: medieval culture. Medieval research has grown tremendously in depth and breadth over the last decades. Particularly our understanding of medieval culture, of the basic living conditions, and the specific value system prevalent at that time has considerably expanded, to a point where we are in danger of no longer seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. The present, innovative handbook offers compact articles on essential topics, ideals, specific knowledge, and concepts defining the medieval world as comprehensively as possible. The topics covered in this new handbook pertain to issues such as love and marriage, belief in God, hell, and the devil, education, lordship and servitude, Christianity versus Judaism and Islam, health, medicine, the rural world, the rise of the urban class, travel, roads and bridges, entertainment, games, and sport activities, numbers, measuring, the education system, the papacy, saints, the senses, death, and money.

This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.

Annual volume presenting the best essays received by the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The 2011 volume opens with three essays focused on Shakespeare: one on Pauline presences in 1 Henry 4, one on the play of letters in Love's Labour's Lost, and another on "productive violence" in Titus Andronicus. The volume then turns to links between Renaissance drama and the wider culture, with essays on Ramistic method in Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, "overflowing" emotion in generically experimental plays of the first decade of the seventeenth century, and the "birdliming" of characters in Bartholomew Fair and Othello. Next come essays devoted to a trio of lyric poets: Sir Philip Sidney, whose frustrated desire leads to the "sacrificial sublime"; Fulke Greville, whose quest for certainty is complicated by his radical Calvinism; and George Herbert, whose spiritual transformations are inspired by the machinery of court masques. The volume closes with essays showcasing a range of interests in the history of ideas: Trinitarianism in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, social satire and the norms of Christian exemplarity, and the humane censorship of Cardinal Bellarmine. Contributors: William A. Coulter, L. Grant Hamby, Bryan Herek, C. Bryan Love, Julia P. McLeod, Kara Northway, James Pearce, Paul J. Stapleton, Jessica Tooker, Lewis Walker, Kathryn Walls, Emma Annette Wilson. Andrew Shifflett and Edward Gieskes are Associate Professors of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

This collection examines gender and Otherness as tools to understand medieval and early modern art as products of their social environments. The essays, uniting up-and-coming and established scholars, explore both iconographic and stylistic similarities deployed to construct gender identity. The text analyzes a vast array of medieval artworks, including Dieric Bouts’s Justice of Otto III, Albrecht Dürer’s Feast of the Rose Garland, Rembrandt van Rijn’s Naked Woman Seated on a Mound, and Renaissance-era transi tombs of French women to illuminate medieval and early modern ideas about gender identity, poverty, religion, honor, virtue, sexuality, and motherhood, among others.