Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England
Cambridge University Press
"A stimulating collection of cross-disciplinary essays and signal contribution to the ‘religious turn' in early modern studies which is highlighting the centrality of the memory arts to how reformation England framed its remembrance of death and the dead.
Memory and Mortality
in Renaissance England
not only offers an accessible introduction to two overlapping fields of interdisciplinary inquiry, the memory and death arts; its twelve chapters, written by some of the leading scholars in early modern studies worldwide, also show how a focus on remembering death in the early modern period can generate new, insightful readings of key English Renaissance authors, including Donne, Shakespeare, Milton and Marvell. With its accessible structure and extensive editorial apparatus,
Memory and Mortality
adds greatly to growing academic interest in the customs and cultures that grew up around the remembrance of death in early modern England and will appeal to scholars and students of English literature, reformation history, and art history." --Stewart Mottram, University of Hull
"Bridging the fields of memory and death studies, this collection is an important contribution to our understanding of the complex interconnections between memory and mortality in early modern English literature, visual culture, and the commemorative arts. These essays by a group of leading scholars offer thought-provoking, highly readable analyses on how English society confronted such vital questions as how to use the memory arts to prepare for death and how the dead should be memorialized and remembered. Each of these case studies provides fresh insight into the far-reaching aesthetic, political, religious, and cultural ramifications of memory and mortality in the period.' --Paul D. Stegner, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
REVIEW:
"The present volume is the explicit commentary on the implicit connections between two earlier anthology projects helmed by the same editorial team, The Memory Arts in Renaissance England
(2016) and The Death Arts in Renaissance England
(2022). Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England
provides the critical commentary and analysis of the literary, dramatic, and artistic subject matter of the memory arts and the death arts that were scrupulously curated in the previous works. William Engel, Rory Loughnane and Grant Williams are a strong editorial team in the lengthy Introduction and the prefatory remarks for each of the three Parts, which together provide thoughtful connective tissue for all twelve of the contributions. The introduction is also a rich and learned essay that takes us through succinct overviews of memory studies and death studies and leads us to where they intersect within early modern culture. It is the emotional salience realised through the threat of oblivion, ‘the irreversible state of being forgotten’ (10), articulated and visualised in the memory arts and death arts alike, and which pulled together the operations of memory and mortality in Renaissance England. [...] A welcome addition to the fold of sixteenth and seventeenth century studies, Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England
offers a litany of engaging paths for those with a variety of interests... Historians of early modern England working on emotion, the body, and space and place especially would be remiss to bypass Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England. --The Seventeenth Century
(10 July 2023)
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: Between Memory and Death (William E. Engel, Rory Loughnane, and Grant Williams)
PART I THE ARTS OF REMEMBERING DEATH
Preface
1 Rebeca Helfer, ‘Death and the Art of Memory in Donne’
2 Jonathan Baldo, ‘Spiritual Accountancy in the Age of Shakespeare’
3 John S. Garrison, ‘Recollection and Pre-emptive Resurrection in Shakespeare’s Sonnets’
4 Scott Newstok, ‘Learn How to Die’
PART II GROUNDING THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEAD
Preface
5 Patricia Phillippy, ‘Memory, Climate, and Mortality: The Dudley Women Among the Fields’
6 Philip Schwyzer, ‘Scattered Bones, Martyrs, Materiality, and Memory in Drayton and Milton’
7 Brian Chalk, ‘Theatrical Monuments in Middleton’s A Game at Chess’
8 Claire Preston, ‘Thomas Browne’s Retreat to Earth’
PART III THE ENDS OF COMMEMORATION
Preface
9 Peter Sherlock, ‘The Unton Portrait Reconsidered’
10 Anita Gilman Sherman, ‘Andrew Marvell’s Taste for Death’
11 Andrew Hiscock, ‘The Many Labours of Mourning a Virgin Queen’
12 Michael Neill, ‘“Superfluous Men” and the Graveyard Politics of The Duchess of Malfi’
BOOK JACKET DESCRIPTION:
Drawing together leading scholars of early modern memory studies and death studies, Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England
explores and illuminates the interrelationships of these fundamental categories of Renaissance knowing and doing, theory and praxis. The collection features an extended Introduction that establishes the rich vein connecting these two fields of study and investigation. Thereafter the collection is arranged into three subsections, ‘The Arts of Remembering Death’, ‘Grounding the Remembrance of the Dead’, and ‘The Ends of Commemoration’, where contributors analyze how memory and mortality intersected in writings, devotional practice, and visual culture. The book will appeal to all scholars of early modern literature and culture, book history, art history, and the history of mnemonics and thanatology, and will prove an indispensable guide to studies for researchers, instructors, and students alike.