Classics, Medieval & Renaissance 2012 - University of Toronto ...

LITERATURE
Reading, Desire, and the Eucharist
in Early Modern Religious Poetry
NEW
Ryan Netzley
The courtly love tradition had a great influence on
the themes of religious poetry: just as an absent
beloved could be longed for passionately, so too
could a distant God be the subject of desire. But
when authors began to perceive God as immanently
available, did the nature and interpretation of
devotional verse change Ryan Netzley argues that
early modern religious lyrics presented both desire
and reading as free, loving activities, rather than as
endless struggles or dramatic quests.
Challenging fundamental assumptions of literary
criticism, Reading, Desire, and the Eucharist shows
how poetry can encourage love for its own sake,
rather than in the hopes of salvation.
Ryan Netzley is an assistant professor in the Department
of English at Southern Illinois University,
Carbondale.
‘Speaking to central questions about sacramental
and Eucharistic poetry in the Early Modern period,
this high-quality study advances a fresh theoretical
understanding of how reading and desire work.’
David Ainsworth, University of Alabama
304 pp / 6 x 9 / 2011
Cloth 978-1-4426-4281-2 $70.00 (£48.99)
Strangers in Blood
Relocating Race in the Renaissance
Jean E. Feerick
Strangers in Blood explores, in a range of early
modern literature, the association between migration
to foreign lands and the moral and physical degeneration
of individuals. Arguing that in early modern
discourse the concept of race was primarily linked
with notions of bloodline, lineage, and genealogy
rather than with skin colour and ethnicity, Jean E.
Feerick establishes that the characterization of settler
communities as subject to degenerative decline
constituted a massive challenge to the fixed system
of blood that had hitherto underpinned the English
social hierarchy. In emphasizing the decline of blood
as found at the centre of colonial narratives, Feerick
illustrates the unwitting disassembling of one racial
system and the creation of another.
Jean E. Feerick is an assistant professor in the Department
of English at Brown University.
‘Rich in its attention to language, and to a wellchosen
range of historical and literary representations,
Feerick’s remarkably well-written, persuasive, and
original book emphasizes the perceived instability
of early modern racial identities, their vulnerability
especially to the conditions of transplantation, culture,
time, and space.’
Emily C. Bartels, Rutgers University
264 pp / 6 x 9 / 2010
Cloth 978-1-4426-4140-2 $60.00 (£41.99)
Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare
and the Renaissance
Edited by Troni Y. Grande and Garry Sherbert
This collection of writings brings together Northrop
Frye’s large body of work on Shakespeare and other
Renaissance writers (with the exception of Milton,
who is featured in other volumes), and includes major
articles, introductions, public lectures, and four
previously published books. Spanning forty years of
Frye’s career as a university professor and literary
critic, these insightful analyses not only reveal the
author’s formidable intellect but also offer the reader
a transformative experience of creative imagination.
With extensive annotation and an in-depth critical
introduction, the volume demonstrates Frye’s
wide-ranging knowledge of Renaissance culture
and its pivotal significance in his work, his impact
on Renaissance criticism and the Stratford Shakespeare
Festival, and his continuing importance as a
literary theorist.
Troni Y. Grande is an associate professor in the
Department of English at the University of Regina.
Garry Sherbert is an associate professor in the Department
of English at the University of Regina.
(Collected Works of Northrop Frye 28)
968 pp / 6 x 9 / 2010
Cloth 978-1-4426-4168-6 $195.00 (£136.99)
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