The Work of Form Poetics and Materaility in Early Modern Culture

The study of English literature has often been torn between historical approaches and formal ones, between attention to context and a focus on the poem, play, or novel in and of itself. This collection draws together prestigious scholars from the UK, US, and Canada in investigating ways of reading early modern poetry which unite these approaches. Essays explore a wide range of meanings of form, drawing on early modern literary theory as well as practice. From songperformance, to the layout of printed and manuscript pages, from poems' modelling of patterns of cognition to their mechanisms for social exclusion and inclusion, this book expands definitions andunderstandings of early modern poetic form.