This is the first major collection of essays to look at the literature of the entire Tudor period, from the reign of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth I. It pays particular attention to the years before 1580. Those decades saw, amongst other things, the establishment of print culture and growth of a reading public; the various phases of the English Reformation and process of political centralization that enabled and accompanied them; the increasing emulation of Continental and classical literatures under the influence of humanism; the self-conscious emergence of English as a literary language and determined creation of a native literary canon; the beginnings of English empire and the consolidation of a sense of nationhood. However, study of Tudor literature prior to 1580 is not only of worth as a context, or foundation, for an Elizabethan 'golden age'. As this much-needed volume will show, it is also of artistic, intellectual, and cultural merit in its own right. Written by experts from Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom, the forty-five chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature recover some of the distinctive voices of sixteenth-century writing, its energy, variety, and inventiveness. As well as essays on well-known writers, such as Philip Sidney or Thomas Wyatt, the volume contains the first extensive treatment in print of some of the Tudor era's most original voices.
Reviews
In their readiness to challenge assumptions, to re-think theoretical paradigms, and to hold possibilities, alternatives, and contradictions productively in play, these and many other essays in this volume do justice to the dense and complex literature of this period, modelling that literatures best features its ambition, polemic, and debate in its own pages and, in that respect, providing a model to us all. * Catherine Bates, Notes and Queries *
All of the essays are informed by clear and careful close readings which exemplify and support the arguments presented. They do this in such a way as to make the arguments not only compelling, but also accessible to the reader for whom the texts discussed are unfamiliar. This book is thus in the very best sense a handbook - it will offer freeiring and useful support to the reader of the primary texts of Tudor literature. It will be useful to student and lecturer alike in providing introductory material to new texts, up-to-date summaries of extant scholarship, and full bibliography. * Elisabeth Dutton, English *


Awards
Winner of Awarded the Sixteenth Century Studies Society's Roland H. Bainton Prize for Reference Works 2010.



Book Information
ISBN 9780199697892
Author Mike Pincombe
Format Paperback
Page Count 864
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1490g