A Companion to the Global Renaissance

Featuring twenty one newly-commissioned essays, A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion demonstrates how today's globalization is the result of a complex and lengthy historical process that had its roots in England's mercantile and cross-cultural interactions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An innovative collection that interrogates the global paradigm of our period and offers a new history of globalization by exploring its influences on English culture and literature of the early modern period. Moves beyond traditional notions of Renaissance history mainly as a revival of antiquity and presents a new perspective on England's mercantile and cross-cultural interactions with the New and Old Worlds of the Americas, Africa, and the East, as well with Northern Europe. Illustrates how twentieth-century globalization was the result of a lengthy and complex historical process linked to the emergence of capitalism and colonialism Explores vital topics such as East-West relations and Islam; visual representations of cultural 'others'; gender and race struggles within the new economies and cultures; global drama on the cosmopolitan English stage, and many more

Featuring twenty one newly-commissioned essays, A Companion tothe Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Eraof Expansion demonstrates how today's globalization is theresult of a complex and lengthy historical process that had itsroots in England's mercantile and cross-cultural interactions ofthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.* An innovative collection that interrogates the global paradigmof our period and offers a new history of globalization byexploring its influences on English culture and literature of theearly modern period.
* Moves beyond traditional notions of Renaissance history mainlyas a revival of antiquity and presents a new perspective onEngland's mercantile and cross-cultural interactions with the Newand Old Worlds of the Americas, Africa, and the East, as well withNorthern Europe.
* Illustrates how twentieth-century globalization was the resultof a lengthy and complex historical process linked to the emergenceof capitalism and colonialism
* Explores vital topics such as East-West relations and Islam;visual representations of cultural 'others'; gender and racestruggles within the new economies and cultures; global drama onthe cosmopolitan English stage, and many more

List of Illustrations ix

Notes on Contributors x

Acknowledgments xvi

Introduction: The Global Renaissance 1
Jyotsna G. Singh

Part I: Mapping the Global 29

1 The New Globalism: Transcultural Commerce, Global Systems Theory,and Spenser's Mammon 31
Daniel Vitkus

2 "Travailing" Theory: Global Flows of Labor and theEnclosure of the Subject 50
Crystal Bartolovich

3 Islam and Tamburlaine's World-picture 67
John Michael Archer

4 Traveling Nowhere: Global Utopias in the Early Modern Period82
Chloë Houston

Part II: "Contact Zones" 99

5 The Benefi ts of a Warm Study: The Resistance to Travel beforeEmpire 101
Andrew Hadfield

6 "Apes of Imitation": Imitation and Identity in SirThomas Roe's Embassy to India 114
Nandini Das

7 A Multinational Corporation: Foreign Labor in the London EastIndia Company 129
Richmond Barbour

8 Where was Iceland in 1600? 149
Mary C. Fuller

9 East by North-east: The English among the Russians,1553-1603 163
Gerald MacLean

10 The Politics of Identity: William Adams, John Saris, and theEnglish East India Company's Failure in Japan 178
Catherine Ryu

11 The Queer Moor: Bodies, Borders, and Barbary Inns 190
Ian Smith

Part III: Networks of Exchange: Traveling Objects 205

12 Guns and Gawds: Elizabethan England's Infi del Trade207
Matthew Dimmock

13 Cassio, Cash, and the "Infidel 0": Arithmetic,Double-entry Bookkeeping, and Othello's Unfaithful Accounts223
Patricia Parker

14 Seeds of Sacrifice: Amaranth, the Gardens of Tenochtitlan andSpenser's Faerie Queene 242
Edward M. Test

15 "So Pale, So Lame, So Lean, So Ruinous": TheCirculation of Foreign Coins in Early Modern England 262
Stephen Deng

16 Canary, Bristoles, Londres, Ingleses: English Traders in theCanaries in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 279
Barbara Sebek

17 "The Whole Globe of the Earth": Almanacs andTheir Readers 294
Adam Smyth

18 Cesare Vecellio, Venetian Writer and Art-book Cosmopolitan305
Ann Rosalind Jones

Part IV: The Globe Staged 323

19 Bettrice's Monkey: Staging Exotica in Early ModernLondon Comedy 325
Jean E. Howard

20 The Maltese Factor: The Poetics of Place in The Jew of Maltaand The Knight of Malta 340
Virginia Mason Vaughan

21 Local/Global Pericles: International Storytelling, DomesticSocial Relations, Capitalism 355
David Morrow

Index 378