Cultural Reformations (v. 2)

The original essays in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge scholars working in the field aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of emphasizing settled consensus they direct their readers to areas of enlivened and unresolved debate. The deepest periodic division in English literary history has been between the medieval and the early modern, not least because the cultural investments in maintaining that division are exceptionally powerful. Narratives of national and religious identity and freedom; of individual liberties; of the history of education and scholarship; of reading or the history of the book; of the very possibility of persuasive historical consciousness itself: each of these narratives (and more) is motivated by positing a powerful break around 1500. None of the claims for a profound historical and cultural break at the turn of the fifteenth into the sixteenth centuries is negligible. The very habit of working within those periodic bounds (either medieval or early modern) tends, however, simultaneously to affirm and to ignore the rupture. It affirms the rupture by staying within standard periodic bounds, but it ignores it by never examining the rupture itself. The moment of profound change is either, for medievalists, just over an unexplored horizon; or, for Early Modernists, a zero point behind which more penetrating examination is unnecessary. That situation is now rapidly changing. Scholars are building bridges that link previously insular areas. Both periods are starting to look different in dialogue with each other. The change underway has yet to find collected voices behind it. Cultural Reformations volume aims to provide those voices. It will give focus, authority, and drive to a new area.

ISBN 0199212481   Part volume Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History ISBN13 9780199212484 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 1360 Publisher Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Imprint Oxford University Press   Series title Oxford 21st Century Approaches to Literature Format Hardback   Height (mm) 251 Publication date 24 Jun 2010   Width (mm) 178 DEWEY 820.9001   Spine width (mm) 46 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly Pages 704

		List of Illustrations
		List of Abbreviations
		List of Contributors
1		Introduction by James Simpson		1
Part I		Histories
2		Anachronism by Margreta De Grazia		13
3		National Histories by Ardis Butterfield		33
4		Historiography by Jesse Lander		56
5		Literary Histories by Seth Lerer		75
Part II		Spatialities
6		Place by James Simpson		95
7		Enclosed Spaces by Lynn Staley		113
8		Travel by Andrew Hadfield		134
Part III		Doctrines
9		The Eucharist by Sarah Beckwith		153
10		The Saints by Janel Mueller		166
11		Vernacular Theology by Thomas Betteridge		188
12		Conscience by Paul Strohm		206
Part IV		Legalities
13		Theatre by Lorna Hutson		227
14		When English became Latin by Tim William Machan		247
15		Heresy and Treason by David Loewenstein		264
16		Naughty Printed Books by David Scott Kastan		287
Part V		Outside The Law
17		Utopian Pleasure by Stephen Greenblatt		305
18		Folly by Greg Walker		321
		More...

There is a wonderful diversity of texts, approaches and ideas on offer here...an exciting and diverse volume. Mike Rodman Jones, Journal of Northern Renaissance

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