This series places early modern English drama within the context of the European Renaissance and, more specifically, within the context of Italian cultural, dramatic, and literary traditions, with reference to the impact and influence of both classical and contemporary culture. Among the various forms of influence, the series considers early modern Italian novellas, theatre, and discourses as direct or indirect sources, analogues and paralogues for the construction of Shakespeare's drama, particularly in the comedies, romances, and other Italianate plays. Critical analysis focusing on other cultural transactions, such as travel and courtesy books, the arts, fencing, dancing, and fashion, will also be encompassed within the scope of the series. Special attention is paid to the manner in which early modern English dramatists adapted Italian materials to suit their theatrical agendas, creating new forms, and stretching the Renaissance practice of contaminatio to achieve, even if unconsciously, a process of rewriting, remaking, and refashioning of 'alien' cultures. The series welcomes both single-author studies and collections of essays and invites proposals that take into account the transition of cultures between the two countries as a bilateral process, paying attention also to the penetration of early modern English culture into the Italian world.
Edited
By Michele Marrapodi
November 28, 2016
Applying recent developments in new historicism and cultural materialism - along with the new perspectives opened up by the current debate on intertextuality and the construction of the theatrical text - the essays collected here reconsider the pervasive influence of Italian culture, literature, ...
Edited
By Soko Tomita
March 18, 2009
Through entries on 291 Italian books (451 editions) published in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, covering the years 1558-1603, this catalogue represents a summary of current research and knowledge of diffusion of Italian culture on English literature in this period. It also provides ...
Edited
By Soko Tomita, Masahiko Tomita
November 26, 2014
A sequel to Tomita’s A Bibliographical Catalogue of Italian Books Printed in England 1558-1603, this volume provides the data for the succeeding 40 years (during the reign of King James I and Charles I) and contributes to the study of Anglo-Italian relations in literature through entries on 187 ...
By Anthony Ellis
November 10, 2016
This first book-length study to trace the evolution of the comic old man in Italian and English Renaissance comedy shows how English dramatists adopted and reimagined an Italian model to reflect native concerns about and attitudes toward growing old. Anthony Ellis provides an in-depth study of the...
By Michael J. Redmond
November 28, 2016
The use of Italian culture in the Jacobean theatre was never an isolated gesture. In considering the ideological repercussions of references to Italy in prominent works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Michael J. Redmond argues that early modern intertextuality was a dynamic process of ...
Edited
By Michele Marrapodi
November 17, 2016
Throwing fresh light on a much discussed but still controversial field, this collection of essays places the presence of Italian literary theories against and alongside the background of English dramatic traditions, to assess this influence in the emergence of Elizabethan theatrical convention and ...
By Selene Scarsi
November 16, 2016
Situating itself in a long tradition of studies of Anglo-Italian literary relations in the Renaissance, this book consists of an analysis of the representation of women in the extant Elizabethan translations of the three major Italian Renaissance epic poems (Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando ...
Edited
By Alessandra Petrina, Alessandro Arienzo
September 30, 2016
Taking into consideration the political and literary issues hanging upon the circulation of Machiavelli's works in England, this volume highlights how topics and ideas stemming from Machiavelli's books - including but not limited to the Prince - strongly influenced the contemporary political debate...
By Duncan Salkeld
September 08, 2016
Courtesans - women who achieve wealth, status, or power through sexual transgression - have played both a central and contradictory role in literature: they have been admired, celebrated, feared, and vilified. This study of the courtesan in Renaissance English drama focuses not only on the moral ...
By Graham Holderness
September 08, 2016
Shakespeare and Venice is the first book length study to describe and chronicle the mythology of Venice that was formulated in the Middle Ages and has persisted in fiction and film to the present day. Graham Holderness focuses specifically on how that mythology was employed by Shakespeare to ...
By Alessandra Petrina
October 28, 2009
Machiavelli in the British Isles reassesses the impact of Machiavelli's The Prince in sixteenth-century England and Scotland through the analysis of early English translations produced before 1640, surviving in manuscript form. This study concentrates on two of the four extant sixteenth-century ...
By Michele Marrapodi
November 28, 2014
Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance investigates the works of Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists from within the context of the European Renaissance and, more specifically, from within the context of Italian cultural, dramatic, and literary traditions, with reference to the impact and ...