Customer Reviews

The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500-1600 (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

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For those wanting to delve into Shakespearean or Elizabethan literature, this is an excellent collection by respected scholars in each of the areas described in the Amz synopsis(above). Modern readers cannot imagine what a different significance there was 400 years ago for writing, for drama, for the creation of arts or for the grappling with politics or social policy. Kinney's volume is an excellent launching point for a literary reader to get perspective on the cultural constraints and opportunities that birthed Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, et al.

If your focus is primarily on Shakespeare, you may do as well to consider some of the other Cambridge Companions" volumes: either "...Companion to Shakespeare" or "...to Shakespeare Studies" or "...to Shakespeare on Stage." (or if pursuing other authors, to... Jonson, Spenser, etc.). In Kinney's volume, however, you find a broader inclusion of the wide-ranging forces impinging on the writing environment of the 1590s. Without having to consult separate volumes on Authorship or 16th century lyric or the patronage system, the reader finds here excellent scholarly surveys of fifteen crucial regions of writerly concern.

The authors' conclusions are generally well referenced through notes (end of each chapter) and provide helpful recommendations for further reading by topic.

Additionally, there are chronologies of the 16th century at the front of the book which help you place literary, social and political in temporal relations to each other. Overall, an excellent investment in your appreciation of the gestation and birth of renaissance English literature.