Andrew King & Matthew Woodcock 
Medieval into Renaissance 
Essays for Helen Cooper

Essays on topics of literary interest crossing the boundaries between the medieval and early modern period.


The borderline between the periods commonly termed ‘medieval’ and ‘Renaissance’, or ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’, is one of the most hotly, energetically and productively contested faultlines in literary history studies. The essays presented in this volume both build upon and respond to the work of Professor Helen Cooper, a scholar who has long been committed to exploring the complex connections and interactions between medieval and Renaissance literature. The contributors re-examine a range of ideas, authors and genres addressed in her work, including pastoral, chivalric romance, early English drama, and the writings of Chaucer, Langland, Spenser and Shakespeare. As a whole, thevolume aims to stimulate active debates on the ways in which Renaissance writers used, adapted, and remembered aspects of the medieval.


Andrew King is Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at University College, Cork; Matthew Woodcock is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of East Anglia.


Contributors: Joyce Boro, Aisling Byrne, Nandini Das, Mary C. Flannery, Alexandra Gillespie, Andrew King, Megan G. Leitch, R.W. Maslen, Jason Powell, Helen Vincent, James Wade, Matthew Woodcock

Table of Content

Introduction – Andrew King and Matthew Woodcock

Unknowe, unkow, Vncovthe, uncouth: From Chaucer and Gower to Spenser and Milton – Alexandra Gillespie

Armour that doesn’t work: An Anti-meme in Medieval and Renaissance Romance – Robert Maslen

‘Of his ffader spak he no thing’: Family Resemblance and Anxiety of Influence in Fifteenth-Century Prose Romance – Megan G. Leitch

Writing Westwards: Medieval English Romances and their Early Modern Irish Audiences – Aisling Byrne

Penitential Romance after the Reformation – James Wade

The English Laureate in Time: John Skelton’s
Garland of Laurel – Mary C. Flannery

Thomas Churchyard and the Medieval Complaint Tradition – Matthew Woodcock

Placing Arcadia – Nandini Das

Fathers, Sons and Surrogates: Fatherly Advice in
Hamlet – Jason Powell

‘To visit the sick court’: Misogyny as Disease in
Swetnam the Woman-Hater’ – Joyce Boro

The Monument of Uncertainty: Sovereign and Literary Authority in Samuel Sheppard’s
The Faerie King – Andrew King

Mopsa’s Arcadia: Choice Flowers Gathered out of Sir Philip Sidney’s Rare Garden into Eighteenth-Century Chapbooks – Helen Vincent

Bibliography

Index

A Bibliography of Helen Cooper’s Published Works

About the author

MEGAN G. LEITCH is is Reader in English Literature at Cardiff University, Wales.