Michelle O'Callaghan – författare

This is a study of a group of Jacobean Spenserian poets, William Browne, George Wither, and Christopher Brooke, and of the ways in which these writers represented themselves as a distinctive oppositional community in the years 1612 to 1625. This Spenserian community had its social basis in the culture of early modern London and was given physical expression through the practice of collaboration and an innovative use of print. Yet, it was also an 'imagined community' expressed through fictions that drew on common literary and political traditions. The result was a type of literary commonwealth that claimed the authority to engage in public debate on issues of politics and culture. By drawing attention to the relationships between writers and the traditions and environments that enable textual communities, this book provides a new perspective for studying early modern culture.

Dreams have been significant in many different cultures, carrying messages about this world and others, posing problems about knowledge, truth, and what it means to be human. This thought-provoking collection of essays explores dreams and visions in early modern Europe, canvassing the place of the dream and dream-theory in texts and in social movements. In topics ranging from the dreams of animals to the visions of Elizabeth I, and from prophetic dreams to ghosts in political writing, this book asks what meanings early modern people found in dreams.

Dreams have been significant in many different cultures, carrying messages about this world and others, posing problems about knowledge, truth, and what it means to be human. This thought-provoking collection of essays explores dreams and visions in early modern Europe, canvassing the place of the dream and dream-theory in texts and in social movements. In topics ranging from the dreams of animals to the visions of Elizabeth I, and from prophetic dreams to ghosts in political writing, this book asks what meanings early modern people found in dreams.

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Inns of Court and fashionable London taverns developed a culture of clubbing, urban sociability and wit. The convivial societies that emerged created rituals to define social identities and to engage in literary play and political discussion. Michelle O'Callaghan argues that the lawyer-wits, including John Hoskyns, in company with authors such as John Donne, Ben Jonson and Thomas Coryate, consciously reinvigorated humanist traditions of learned play. Their experiments with burlesque, banquet literature, parody and satire resulted in a volatile yet creative dialogue between civility and licence, and between pleasure and the violence of scurrilous words. The wits inaugurated a mode of literary fellowship that shaped the history and literature of sociability in the seventeenth century. This study will provide many insights for historians and literary scholars of the period.

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Inns of Court and fashionable London taverns developed a culture of clubbing, urban sociability and wit. The convivial societies that emerged created rituals to define social identities and to engage in literary play and political discussion. Michelle O'Callaghan argues that the lawyer-wits, including John Hoskyns, in company with authors such as John Donne, Ben Jonson and Thomas Coryate, consciously reinvigorated humanist traditions of learned play. Their experiments with burlesque, banquet literature, parody and satire resulted in a volatile yet creative dialogue between civility and licence, and between pleasure and the violence of scurrilous words. The wits inaugurated a mode of literary fellowship that shaped the history and literature of sociability in the seventeenth century. This study will provide many insights for historians and literary scholars of the period.

Thomas Middleton is one of the major English Renaissance dramatists alongside Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson. Middleton continues to fascinate audiences and readers with his black humour, his wry and witty treatment of sexuality, morality, and politics. He is a consummate professional dramatist, experimenting with stagecraft in a manner that combines the visual and the verbal to startling effect. This book brings together these aspects of Middleton's craft through a detailed study of his major plays. Middleton experimented with, and helped to shape, a range of dramatic genres: city comedy, tragicomedy, romance, and revenge tragedy. This new guide analyses in detail how the plays work in terms of the early modern theatre and dramatic genres, as well as elucidating the broader cultural issues shaping the plays. It provides an introduction to critical readings of Middleton’s works as well as modern performances, demonstrating how modern critics, producers, dramatists and film makers see Middleton’s dark, playful and challenging plays as speaking to our times.Key Features*Ideal student guide with its wide ranging introduction to Middleton’s city comedies, tragedies, and collaborative plays and its readings of key texts such as The Roaring Girl, Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Revenger’s Tragedy, Women Beware Women, and The Changeling*Uses the most recent edition available, the Oxford Middleton (2007)*Provides background contexts guiding readers through criticism of the plays as well as recent work on early modern theatre and culture*Emphasis on Middleton’s stagecraft and its assessment of modern adaptations and film versions of his plays

The printed poetry anthologies first produced in sixteenth-century England have long been understood as instrumental in shaping the history of English poetry. This book offers a fresh approach to this history by turning attention to the recreative properties of these books, both in the sense of making again, of crafting and recrafting, and of poetry as a pleasurable pastime. The model of materiality employed extends from books-as-artefacts to their embodiedness - their crafted, performative, and expressive capacities. Publishers invariably advertised the recreational uses of anthologies, locating these books in early modern performance cultures in which poetry was read, silently and in company, sometimes set to music, and re-crafted into other forms. Engaging with studies of material cultures, including work on craft, households, and soundscapes, Crafting Poetry Anthologies argues for a domestic Renaissance in which anthologies travelled across social classes, shaping recreational cultures that incorporated men and women in literary culture.