Crafting Poetry Anthologies in Renaissance England
Early Modern Cultures of Recreation

Renaissance poetry anthologies were crafted within the book trade and re-crafted through performance, transforming Early Modern cultures of recreation.

Michelle O'Callaghan (Author)

9781108792202, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 November 2022

261 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.384 kg

'This illuminating volume will be valuable for many readers with interests in this period.' Sheila T. Cavanagh, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal

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.

Introduction
1. Books in process: Songes and Sonettes and Paradyse of Daynty devises
2. Household books: Richard Jones, Isabella Whitney and anthology-making
3. 'To the Gentleman Reader': recreating Sidney in the 1590s
4. 'Impos'd designe': Englands Helicon and re-creative craft
5. A Poetical Rapsody: Francis Davison, the 'Printer', and the craft of compilation
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Poetry [DC], Literature & literary studies [D]