Focuses on the literary implications of 17th-century religion, Shakespeare's Roman plays, and 16th-century poetry.

Focuses on the literary implications of 17th-century religion, Shakespeare's Roman plays, and 16th-century poetry.

Renaissance Papers collects the best essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. In the 2007 volume, two essays focus on Shakespeare's Roman plays: one on Lavinia's death and Roman suicide inTitus Andronicus, the other on the rhetorical construction of masculinity inJulius Caesar. Five essays address the literary implications of seventeenth-century religious belief and practice, considering the influence ofthe timing and delivery of sermons on John Donne, the impact of godly reforms on Thomas Browne'sReligio Medici, the effect of Scottish on English Presbyterianism during the 1640s, the critique of reformist utopianism in Margaret Cavendish'sThe Blazing World, and the implications ofParadise Lost's lack of a frontispiece. Two essays on sixteenth-century poetry look at the literary voices of commoners and of kings: one focuses on theportraits of women and commoners inA Mirror for Magistrates, while the other examines the political implications of King James VI/I's metrical translations of David's Psalms.
Contributors: Reid Barbour, Nora L. Corrigan, William A. Coulter, Julie Fann, Robert Kilgore, Sonya Freeman Loftis, Christopher Hair, Jim Pearce, and John N. Wall

M. Thomas Hester is Professor of English at North Carolina State University, and ChristopherCobb is Assistant Professor of English at Saint Mary's College.

John Donne and the Practice of Priesthood - John N. Wall
Charity, Halifax, and Utopia: The Disadvantageous Setting of Thomas Browne'sReligio Medici - Reid Barbour
Presbyterian Church and State BeforeThe Solemn League and Covenant - Julie Fann
The Flaw in Paradise: The Critique of Idealism in Margaret Cavendish'sThe Blazing World - Christopher Hair
"Conceited portraiture before his Book ... to catch fools and silly gazers" :Some Reflections on Paradise Lost and the Tradition of the Engraved Frontispiece Engraved Frontispiece - William A. Coulter
"But Smythes Must Speake": Women's and Commoner's Voices in theMirror for Magistrates - Nora L. Corrigan
Fit for a King: The Manuscript Poems of King James VI/I - Robert Kilgore
The Suicide of Lavinia: Finding Rome inTitus Andronicus - Sonya Freeman Loftis
The Language of the Gods: Rhetoric and the Construction of Masculinity inJulius Caeser - Jim Pearce