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A set of specially commissioned essays forming a fresh understanding of the poet within his time and place.
An investigation into early modern gardens, gender and writing, this study considers not only published literary representations of gardens, but also actual garden landscapes and unpublished evidence of everyday gardening practice. Jennifer Munroe here analyzes how writers appropriated the developing gendered tension in gardening that stemmed from a shift from the garden as a means of feeding a family, to the garden as an aesthetic object imbued with status.
New essays on the cultural representations of the relationship between Britain and China in the nineteenth century, focusing on the Amherst diplomatic problem.
Re-thinking the roles played by mathematics and cartography in the English seventeenth century, this book explores the unstable currency of mathematics at the time, and traces it through a wide variety of literary and scientific texts.
This book is about the literary and friendship networks that were active in Britain for a 250 year period. Patterns in the nature of literary social circles emerge: they may centre upon a location, like Christ Church, or a person, like Aaron Hill; they may suffer stress when private relationships become public knowledge, as Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon shows; and they may model themselves on a preceding age, as the relationship between the Sidney circle and Lady Mary Wroth exemplifies. Despite these similarities, no two coteries are the same. The circles this volume examines even differ in their acceptance of their own status as a coterie: someone like Constance Fowler was certainly part of a strict familial coterie; the Scriberlians were a more informal set who were also members of other groups; and although Byron’s years of fame are regularly associated with Holland House, he often denied being of their party. With an Afterword by Helen Hackett
This volume examines how literature was central to the debates about royal succession and political culture of the early eighteenth century. It reshapes our understanding of writers such as Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, and Joseph Addison, as well as our understanding of political, literary, and material cultures of the time.
This book addresses the history of the senses in relation to affective piety and its role in devotional practices in the late Middle Ages, focusing on the sense of touch. It argues that only by deeply analysing this specific context of perception can the full significance of sensory religious experience in the Late Middle Ages be understood. Considering the centrality of the body to medieval society and Christianity, this collection explores a range of devotional practices, mainly relating to the Passion of Christ, and features manuscripts, works of devotional literature, art, woodcuts and judicial records. It brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to offer a variety of method...
Dangerous Talk examines the 'lewd, ungracious, detestable, opprobrious, and rebellious-sounding' speech of ordinary men and women who spoke scornfully of kings and queens. Eavesdropping on lost conversations, it reveals the expressions that got people into trouble, and follows the fate of some of the offenders. Introducing stories and characters previously unknown to history, David Cressy explores the contested zones where private words had public consequence. Though 'words were but wind', as the proverb had it, malicious tongues caused social damage, seditious words challenged political authority, and treasonous speech imperilled the crown. Royal regimes from the house of Plantagenet to the...