Literature, Politics and Law in Renaissance England

This collection features the work of both established and up-and-coming scholars in the UK and US, with contributors including Peter Goodrich, Lorna Hutson, Erica Sheen and David Colclough studying the period of the English Renaissance from the 1520s to the 1660s. This wide-ranging study, working on the edge of new historicism as well as book history, covers topics such as libel/slander and literary debate, legal textual production, authorship and the politics of authorial attribution and theatre and the law.

This collection features the work of both established and up-and-coming scholars in the UK and US, with contributors including Peter Goodrich, Lorna Hutson, Erica Sheen and David Colclough studying the period of the English Renaissance from the 1520s to the 1660s. This wide-ranging study, working on the edge of new historicism as well as book history, covers topics such as libel/slander and literary debate, legal textual production, authorship and the politics of authorial attribution and theatre and the law.

List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction: Renaissance, Law and Literature; E.Sheen & L.Hutson Amici curiae: Lawful Manhood and Other Juristic Performances in Renaissance England; P.Goodrich Instigating Treason: The Life and Death of Henry Cuffe, Secretary; A.Stewart 'Unmanly indignities': Adultery, Evidence and Judgement in Heywood's A Woman Killed With Kindness ; S.Mukherji 'She has that in her belly will dry up your ink': Femininity as Challenge in the 'equitable drama' of John Webster; I.Habermann Renaissance Tool Abuse and the Legal History of the Sudden; L.Wilson Taking Liberties: George Wither's A Satyre , Libel and the Law; M.O'Callaghan Freedom of Speech, Libel and the Law in Early Stuart England; D.Colclough John Selden among the Quakers: Antifeminism and the Seventeenth Century Tithes Controversy; M.Nevitt Martyrdom in a Merchant World: Law and Martyrdom in the Restoration Memoirs of Elizabeth Jekyll and Mary Love; S.Wiseman Index