A Guide to English Renaissance Literature: 1500-1660

A guide to English literature from 1500 to 1660. It combines a series of critical essays on understanding Renaissance literature, Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, Renaissance poetry and the contemporary historical background, with a complimentary A to Z section of detailed entries. This up-to-date alpabetical section includes references to, and bibliographies for major authors, plot summaries and critical discussions of principal works, glossaries of important literary terms, and supplementary theoretical background material. A full chronology is also provided, and comprehensive cross-referencing occurs throughout the book. This book provides both thorough descriptions of, and contemporary critical approaches to, texts from Spenser to Milton, from Shakespeare to Jonson, and Sir Thomas More to Elizabeth I. The editor of this work has also edited "Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale and Clerk's Tale" and "Gloriana's Face: Women, Public and Private in the English Renaissance".