Formal Matters: Reading the Materials of English Renaissance Literature

How do the formal properties of early modern texts, together with the materials that envelop and shape them, relate to the cultural, political, and social world of their production? Formal matters: Reading the materials of English Renaissance literature answers this question by linking formalist analysis with the insights of book history. It thus represents the new English Renaissance literary historiography tying literary composition to the materials and material practices of writing.

The book combines studies of familiar and lesser known texts, from the poems and plays of Shakespeare to jests and printed commonplace books. Its ten studies make important, original contributions to research on the genres of early modern literature, focusing on the involvement of literary forms in the scribal and print cultures of compilation, continuation, translation, and correspondence, as well as in matters of political republicanism and popular piety, among others. Taken together, the collection's essays by Heather James, Matthew Zarnowiecki, Adam Smyth, Jeffrey Todd Knight, Tanya Pollard, Henry S. Turner, Alan Stewart, Amanda Bailey, Peter Lake, Shankar Raman, and an afterword by David Scott Kastan, exemplify how an attention to form and matter can historicise writing without abandoning a literary focus.

András Kiséry is Assistant Professor of English at The City College of New York, City University of New York

Allison K. Deutermann is Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York