Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England

This collection reexamines commemoration and memorialization as generative practices illuminating the hidden life of Renaissance death arts.

William E. Engel (Edited by), Rory Loughnane (Edited by), Grant Williams (Edited by)

9781108843393, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 October 2022

280 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.2 cm, 0.59 kg

'The present volume is the explicit commentary on the implicit connections between two earlier anthology projects helmed by the same editorial team, The Memory Arts in Renaissance England (2016) and The Death Arts in Renaissance England (2022). Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England provides the critical commentary and analysis of the literary, dramatic, and artistic subject matter of the memory arts and the death arts that were scrupulously curated in the previous works. William Engel, Rory Loughnane and Grant Williams are a strong editorial team in the lengthy Introduction and the prefatory remarks for each of the three Parts, which together provide thoughtful connective tissue for all twelve of the contributions … A welcome addition to the fold of sixteenth and seventeenth century studies, Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England offers a litany of engaging paths for those with a variety of interests … Historians of early modern England working on emotion, the body, and space and place especially would be remiss to bypass Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England.' Rachel Monsey, The Seventeenth Century

Drawing together leading scholars of early modern memory studies and death studies, Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England explores and illuminates the interrelationships of these categories of Renaissance knowing and doing, theory and praxis. The collection features an extended Introduction that establishes the rich vein connecting these two fields of study and investigation. Thereafter, the collection is arranged into three subsections, 'The Arts of Remembering Death', 'Grounding the Remembrance of the Dead', and 'The Ends of Commemoration', where contributors analyse how memory and mortality intersected in writings, devotional practice, and visual culture. The book will appeal to scholars of early modern literature and culture, book history, art history, and the history of mnemonics and thanatology, and will prove an indispensable guide for researchers, instructors, and students alike.

Introduction: Between memory and death William E. Engel, Rory Loughnane and Grant Williams
Part I. The Arts of Remembering Death: 1. Death and the art of memory in Donne Rebeca Helfer
2. Spiritual accountancy in the age of Shakespeare Jonathan Baldo
3. Recollection and preemptive resurrection in Shakespeare's sonnets John S. Garrison
4. Learn how to die Scott Newstok
Part II. Grounding the Remembrance of the Dead: 5. Memory, climate, and mortality: The Dudley women among the fields Patricia Phillippy
6. Scattered bones, martyrs, materiality and memory in Drayton and Milton Philip Schwyzer
7. Theatrical monuments in Middleton's A game at chess Brian Chalk
8. Thomas Browne's retreat to earth Claire Preston
Part III. The Ends of Commemoration: 9. The Unton portrait reconsidered Peter Sherlock
10. Andrew Marvell's taste for death Anita Gilman Sherman
11. The many labours of mourning a virgin queen Andrew Hiscock
12. Superfluous men and the graveyard politics of the Duchess of Malfi Michael Neill
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]