Essays on topics of literary interest crossing the boundaries between the medieval and early modern period.

Essays on topics of literary interest crossing the boundaries between the medieval and early modern period.

The borderline between the periods commonly termed "medieval" and "Renaissance", or "medieval" and "early modern", is one of the most hotly, energetically and productively contested faultlines in literary history studies. The essays presented in this volume both build upon and respond to the work of Professor Helen Cooper, a scholar who has long been committed to exploring the complex connections and interactions between medieval and Renaissance literature. The contributors re-examine a range of ideas, authors and genres addressed in her work, including pastoral, chivalric romance, early English drama, and the writings of Chaucer, Langland, Spenser and Shakespeare. As a whole, thevolume aims to stimulate active debates on the ways in which Renaissance writers used, adapted, and remembered aspects of the medieval.

Andrew King is Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at University College, Cork; Matthew Woodcock is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of East Anglia.

Contributors: Joyce Boro, Aisling Byrne, Nandini Das, Mary C. Flannery, Alexandra Gillespie, AndrewKing, Megan G. Leitch, R.W. Maslen, Jason Powell, Helen Vincent, James Wade, Matthew Woodcock

Introduction - Andrew King and Matthew Woodcock
Unknowe, unkow, Vncovthe, uncouth: From Chaucer and Gower to Spenser and Milton - Alexandra Gillespie
Armour that doesn't work: An Anti-meme in Medieval and Renaissance Romance - Robert Maslen
'Of his ffader spak he no thing': Family Resemblance and Anxiety of Influence in Fifteenth-Century Prose Romance - Megan G. Leitch
Writing Westwards: Medieval English Romances and their Early Modern Irish Audiences - Aisling Byrne
Penitential Romance after the Reformation - James Wade
The English Laureate in Time: John Skelton'sGarland of Laurel - Mary C. Flannery
Thomas Churchyard and the Medieval Complaint Tradition - Matthew Woodcock
Placing Arcadia - Nandini Das
Fathers, Sons and Surrogates: Fatherly Advice inHamlet - Jason Powell
'To visit the sick court': Misogyny as Disease inSwetnam the Woman-Hater' - Joyce Boro
The Monument of Uncertainty: Sovereign and Literary Authority in Samuel Sheppard'sThe Faerie King - Andrew King
Mopsa's Arcadia: Choice Flowers Gathered out of Sir Philip Sidney's Rare Garden into Eighteenth-Century Chapbooks - Helen Vincent
Bibliography
Index
A Bibliography of Helen Cooper's Published Works