Memory and Affect in Shakespeare's England

The first book to systematically combine the two vibrant yet hitherto unconnected fields of memory and affect in Shakespeare's England.

Jonathan Baldo (Edited by), Isabel Karremann (Edited by)

9781316517697, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 July 2023

300 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.646 kg

'From memory arts to stagecraft via politics and the modalities of space and time, this book's organization demonstrates the varied possibilities of approaching memory and affect together. The essays included here offer smart, persuasive readings of Shakespearean drama and poetry as well as of non-canonical texts. A sustained exploration of memory and affect in early modern England is long overdue, and this collection thus provides an important and welcome intervention in early modern literary studies.' Kristine Johanson, University of Amsterdam

This is the first collection to systematically combine the study of memory and affect in early modern culture. Essays by leading and emergent scholars in the field of Shakespeare studies offer an innovative research agenda, inviting new, exploratory approaches to Shakespeare's work that embrace interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. Drawing on the contexts of Renaissance literature across genres and on various discourses including rhetoric, medicine, religion, morality, historiography, colonialism, and politics, the chapters bring together a broad range of texts, concerns, and methodologies central to the study of early modern culture. Stimulating for postgraduate students, lecturers, and researchers with an interest in the broader fields of memory studies and the history of the emotions – two vibrant and growing areas of research – it will also prove invaluable to teachers of Shakespeare, dramaturges, and directors of stage productions, provoking discussions of how convergences of memory and affect influence stagecraft, dramaturgy, rhetoric, and poetic language.

Introduction Jonathan Baldo and Isabel Karremann
Part I. Ars Memoriae, Ars aAmatoria: 1. Allegories of Love: Affect and the Art of Memory in Shakespeare's Sonnets Rebeca Helfer
2. Twelfth Night and the Rites of Memory Brian Cummings
3 The Lustful Oblivion of Widowhood in The Insatiate Countess Grant Williams
Part II. The Politics of Memory and Affect: 4. 'Gathered Again from the Ash': Traumatropism, Memorialization, and Foxe's Acts and Monuments Devori Kimbro
5. 'To Take on Me the Payn / Ther Fall to Remember': Metrical Visions and the Dangerous Memory Networks of Complaint William Kerwin
6. Jesting, Nostalgia, and Agonistic Play Indira Ghose
Part III. Affective Memory: Temporal and Spatial Modalities: 7. 'My Despised Time': Memory, Temporality, and Disgust in Shakespearean Tragedy Johannes Schlegel
8. Remembering Water in Robert Yarington's Two Lamentable Tragedies Katharine A. Craik
9. Mourning Memory in Cymbeline Daniel Normandin
Part IV. Memory, Affect and Stagecraft: 10. The Tug of Memory: Affect and Invention in Shakespeare's Drama William E. Engel
11. Memory, Text, Affect: The Deaths of Gloucester Rory Loughnane
12. Memory, Affect, and the Multiverse: From the History Plays to The Merry Wives of Windsor Evelyn Tribble
13. Cut Short All Intermission: Sound, Space, Memory, and Macduff's Grief Lina Perkins Wilder
Coda
14. Remembering Shakespeare Peter Holland.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]