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Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies: Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies

About the Book Series

This series places early modern English drama within the context of the European Renaissance and, more specifically, within the context of Italian cultural, dramatic, and literary traditions, with reference to the impact and influence of both classical and contemporary culture. Among the various forms of influence, the series considers early modern Italian novellas, theatre, and discourses as direct or indirect sources, analogues and paralogues for the construction of Shakespeare's drama, particularly in the comedies, romances, and other Italianate plays. Critical analysis focusing on other cultural transactions, such as travel and courtesy books, the arts, fencing, dancing, and fashion, will also be encompassed within the scope of the series. Special attention is paid to the manner in which early modern English dramatists adapted Italian materials to suit their theatrical agendas, creating new forms, and stretching the Renaissance practice of contaminatio to achieve, even if unconsciously, a process of rewriting, remaking, and refashioning of 'alien' cultures. The series welcomes both single-author studies and collections of essays and invites proposals that take into account the transition of cultures between the two countries as a bilateral process, paying attention also to the penetration of early modern English culture into the Italian world.

21 Series Titles


Italian Culture in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries Rewriting, Remaking, Refashioning

Italian Culture in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: Rewriting, Remaking, Refashioning

1st Edition

Edited By Michele Marrapodi
November 28, 2016

Applying recent developments in new historicism and cultural materialism - along with the new perspectives opened up by the current debate on intertextuality and the construction of the theatrical text - the essays collected here reconsider the pervasive influence of Italian culture, literature, ...

Shakespeare, Politics, and Italy Intertextuality on the Jacobean Stage

Shakespeare, Politics, and Italy: Intertextuality on the Jacobean Stage

1st Edition

By Michael J. Redmond
November 28, 2016

The use of Italian culture in the Jacobean theatre was never an isolated gesture. In considering the ideological repercussions of references to Italy in prominent works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Michael J. Redmond argues that early modern intertextuality was a dynamic process of ...

Shakespeare and Renaissance Literary Theories Anglo-Italian Transactions

Shakespeare and Renaissance Literary Theories: Anglo-Italian Transactions

1st Edition

Edited By Michele Marrapodi
November 17, 2016

Throwing fresh light on a much discussed but still controversial field, this collection of essays places the presence of Italian literary theories against and alongside the background of English dramatic traditions, to assess this influence in the emergence of Elizabethan theatrical convention and ...

Translating Women in Early Modern England Gender in the Elizabethan Versions of Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso

Translating Women in Early Modern England: Gender in the Elizabethan Versions of Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso

1st Edition

By Selene Scarsi
November 16, 2016

Situating itself in a long tradition of studies of Anglo-Italian literary relations in the Renaissance, this book consists of an analysis of the representation of women in the extant Elizabethan translations of the three major Italian Renaissance epic poems (Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando ...

Identity, Otherness and Empire in Shakespeare's Rome

Identity, Otherness and Empire in Shakespeare's Rome

1st Edition

Edited By Maria Del Sapio Garbero
November 10, 2016

Contributors to this collection delve into the relationship between Rome and Shakespeare. They view the presence of Rome in Shakespeare's plays not simply as an unquestioned model of imperial culture, or a routine chapter in the history of literary influence, but rather as the problematic link ...

Old Age, Masculinity, and Early Modern Drama Comic Elders on the Italian and Shakespearean Stage

Old Age, Masculinity, and Early Modern Drama: Comic Elders on the Italian and Shakespearean Stage

1st Edition

By Anthony Ellis
November 10, 2016

This first book-length study to trace the evolution of the comic old man in Italian and English Renaissance comedy shows how English dramatists adopted and reimagined an Italian model to reflect native concerns about and attitudes toward growing old. Anthony Ellis provides an in-depth study of the...

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England Literary and Political Influences from the Reformation to the Restoration

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England: Literary and Political Influences from the Reformation to the Restoration

1st Edition

Edited By Alessandra Petrina, Alessandro Arienzo
September 30, 2016

Taking into consideration the political and literary issues hanging upon the circulation of Machiavelli's works in England, this volume highlights how topics and ideas stemming from Machiavelli's books - including but not limited to the Prince - strongly influenced the contemporary political debate...

Shakespeare Among the Courtesans Prostitution, Literature, and Drama, 1500-1650

Shakespeare Among the Courtesans: Prostitution, Literature, and Drama, 1500-1650

1st Edition

By Duncan Salkeld
September 08, 2016

Courtesans - women who achieve wealth, status, or power through sexual transgression - have played both a central and contradictory role in literature: they have been admired, celebrated, feared, and vilified. This study of the courtesan in Renaissance English drama focuses not only on the moral ...

Shakespeare and Venice

Shakespeare and Venice

1st Edition

By Graham Holderness
September 08, 2016

Shakespeare and Venice is the first book length study to describe and chronicle the mythology of Venice that was formulated in the Middle Ages and has persisted in fiction and film to the present day. Graham Holderness focuses specifically on how that mythology was employed by Shakespeare to ...

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