Ben Jonson and Posterity
Reception, Reputation, Legacy

Explores the construction of Jonson's multifaceted reputation and shifting legacy from his own time to the present.

Martin Butler (Edited by), Jane Rickard (Edited by)

9781108842686, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 October 2020

260 pages
15.5 x 23.5 x 2 cm, 0.55 kg

Bringing together leading Jonson scholars, Ben Jonson and Posterity provides new insights into this remarkable writer's reception and legacy over four centuries. Jonson was recognised as the outstanding English writer of his day and has had a powerful influence on later generations, yet his reputation is one of the most multifaceted and conflicted for any writer of the early modern period. The volume brings together multiple critical perspectives, addressing book history, the practice of reading, theatrical influence and adaptation, the history of performance, cultural representation in portraiture, film, fiction, and anecdotes to interrogate Jonson's 'myth'. The collection will be of great interest to all Jonson scholars, as well as having a wider appeal among early modern literary scholars, theatre historians, and scholars interested in intertextuality and reception from the Renaissance to the present day.

Introduction. Immortal Ben Jonson Martin Butler and Jane Rickard
Part I. Conceptualising Jonson: 1. Popular Jonson James Loxley
2. Pedantic Ben Jonson Adam Zucker
3. Corporeal Jonson Jean E. Howard
Part II. Jonson's Early Reception: 4. Seventeenth-Century Readers of Jonson's 1616 Works Jane Rickard
5. Jonson's Ghost and the Restoration Stage Jennie Challinor
6. Jonson and the Friends of Liberty Tom Lockwood
Part III. Jonsonian Afterlives: 7. Anecdotal Jonson Paul Menzer
8. Jonson in the Shadows Stephen Orgel
9. Adapting Jonson: Three Twentieth-Century Volpones Richard O'Brien
10. Jonson and Modern Memory Martin Butler
Afterword. Re-making Jonson in the digital world
or, Jonson, Our Contemporary? Julie Sanders.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]