Shaping Remembrance from Shakespeare to Milton

A study of remembrance in post-Reformation England in religious and secular artworks and texts by Shakespeare, Milton, and women writers.

Patricia Phillippy (Author)

9781108422987, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 June 2018

280 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.6 kg

'Compellingly written, and bringing together an unusual and rich collection of texts, artefacts, and practices with a methodology that generates fresh insights into post-Reformation literary and memory culture … This is an important addition to what is at the moment one of the most vibrant fields in early modern studies.' Isabel Karremann, Modern Language Review

Whether situated in churches or circulating in more flexible, mobile works - manuscript or printed texts, jewels or rosaries, personal bequests or antique 'rarities' - monuments were ubiquitous in post-Reformation England. In this period of religious change, the unsettled meanings of sacred sites and artifacts encouraged a new conception of remembrance and, with it, changed relationships between devotional and secular writings, arts, and identities. Beginning in the parish church, Shaping Remembrance from Shakespeare to Milton moves beyond that space to see remembrance as shaping dynamic systems within which early modern men and women experienced loss and recollection. Removing monuments from parochial or antiquarian concerns, this study re-imagines them as pervasively involved with other commemorative works, not least the writings of our most canonical authors. These far-reaching, flexible chapters combine three critical strands - religion, materiality, and gender - to describe the arts of remembrance as material and textual remains of living webs of connection in which creators and creations are mutually involved.

Introduction – 'An amber casket'
Part I. 'Signes of Remembrance': 1. 'A Mousoleum for a flie': Sidney Montagu and the sacramental sign
2. Wondrous work: crafting remembrance in the Montagu archive
3. Innogen's needle: remembrance and romance in Cymbeline
Part II. 'Monuments of Antiquitie'
4. 'The grave is but a cabinet': remembrance and recreation in post-reformation London
5. Shakespearean reliquaries: Pericles and the ark of wonder
6. 'Chain'd up in alabaster': awakening remembrance in The Winter's Tale and Comus
Conclusion – 'many worlds fantastic framed'.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]