This book opens with a crisis of recollection. In the early modern period, real political traumas like civil war and regicide exacerbated what were already perceived ruptures in myths of English descent. William Camden and other scholars had revealed that the facts of history could not justify the Arthurian myths, nor could history itself guarantee any moment of collective origin for the English people. Yet poets and playwrights concerned with the status of the emerging nation state did no...

A wide-ranging group of scholarly essays that probe the historical nature of English identity, both through self-definition and in relationship to the rest of Europe

In the current climate of global military conflict and terrorism, Shakespeare at Peace offers new readings of Shakespeare’s plays, illuminating a discourse of peace previously shadowed by war and violence. Using contemporary examples such as speeches, popular music, and science fiction adaptations of the plays, Shakespeare at Peace reads Shakespeare’s work to illuminate current debates and rhetoric around conflict and peace. In this challenging and evocative book, Garriso...

This volume brings together two vibrant areas of Renaissance studies today: memory and sexuality. The contributors show that not only Shakespeare but also a broad range of his contemporaries were deeply interested in how memory and sexuality interact. Are erotic experiences heightened or deflated by the presence of memory? Can a sexual act be commemorative? Can an act of memory be eroticized? How do forms of romantic desire underwrite forms of memory? To answer such questions, these author...