This series places early modern English drama within the context of the European Renaissance and, more specifically, within the context of Italian cultural, dramatic, and literary traditions, with reference to the impact and influence of both classical and contemporary culture. Among the various forms of influence, the series considers early modern Italian novellas, theatre, and discourses as direct or indirect sources, analogues and paralogues for the construction of Shakespeare's drama, particularly in the comedies, romances, and other Italianate plays. Critical analysis focusing on other cultural transactions, such as travel and courtesy books, the arts, fencing, dancing, and fashion, will also be encompassed within the scope of the series. Special attention is paid to the manner in which early modern English dramatists adapted Italian materials to suit their theatrical agendas, creating new forms, and stretching the Renaissance practice of contaminatio to achieve, even if unconsciously, a process of rewriting, remaking, and refashioning of 'alien' cultures. The series welcomes both single-author studies and collections of essays and invites proposals that take into account the transition of cultures between the two countries as a bilateral process, paying attention also to the penetration of early modern English culture into the Italian world.
By Graham Holderness
July 04, 2025
This new examination of Shakespeare’s four Roman tragedies (Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra), revisits Shakespeare’s dramatic recreations of ancient Rome in the light of considerations of place: the places from which Shakespeare initiated his imaginative ...
By Mary Gallucci
December 23, 2024
Antonfrancesco Grazzini’s plays, La Spiritata (The Possessed Girl) and La Strega (The Witch), are available in English for the first time, with notes and an "Introduction". These plays deal with witchcraft, superstition, sexuality, and abortion. The context for such themes is analyzed in the "...
By Cristina Paravano
December 18, 2024
Massinger’s Italy: Re-Imagining Italian Culture in the Plays of Philip Massinger offers the first book-length account of the pervasive influence of Italian culture on the canon of Philip Massinger, one of the most successful playwrights of the post-Shakespearean period. This volume explores the ...
By James Calum O’Neill
December 18, 2024
Described as ‘the most beautiful book ever printed’ previous research has focused on the printing history of the Hypnerotomachia and its copious literary sources. This monograph critically engages with the narrative of the Hypnerotomachia and with Poliphilo as a character within this narrative, ...
By Beatrice Righetti
December 12, 2024
Shakespeare’s Shrews: Italian Traditions of Paradoxes and the Woman’s Debate investigates the echoes of two early modern discourses—paradoxical writing and the woman’s question or querelle des femmes—in the representation of the “Shakespearean shrew” in The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About ...
By Marco Antonio Andreacchio
November 29, 2024
Medieval debates over "divine creation" are systematically obscured in our age by the conflict between "Intelligent Design" Creationists and Evolutionists. The present investigation cuts through the web of contemporary conflicts to examine problems seated at the heart of medieval talk about ...
Edited
By Beatrice Fuga, Alessandra Petrina
November 08, 2024
This volume breaks new ground in the exploration of Anglo-Italian cultural relations: it presents analyses of a wide range of early modern Italian texts adapted into contemporary English culture, often through intermediary French translations. When transposed into English, their Italian origin was ...
Edited
By Silvia Bigliazzi
July 31, 2024
Revisiting Shakespeare’s Italian Resources is about the complex dynamics of transmission and transformation of the Italian sources of twelve Shakespearean plays, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to Cymbeline. It focuses on the works of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, Da Porto, Bandello, Ariosto, Dolce, ...
By John H. Cameron
December 22, 2023
This book posits that Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy draws inspiration from the Italian “politic histories” of the early modern period. These works of history, influenced by the Roman historian Tacitus, delve into the exploration of the machinations of power politics in governance and the shaping of...
By Maria Del Sapio Garbero
September 25, 2023
Rome was tantamount to its ruins, a dismembered body, to the eyes of those – Italians and foreigners – who visited the city in the years prior to or encompassing the lengthy span of the Renaissance. Drawing on the double movement of archaeological exploration and creative reconstruction entailed in...
By Louise George Clubb
January 14, 2020
Pollastra and the Origins of Twelfth Night addresses two closely linked and increasingly studied issues: the nature of the relation of Shakespeare's plays to Italian culture, and the technology of modern theater invented in Renaissance Italy. The discovery of forgotten works by Giovanni Lappoli, ...
By Rocco Coronato
November 02, 2017
This volume presents a contrastive study of the overlapping careers of Shakespeare and Caravaggio through the comparison of their strikingly similar conventional belief in symbol and the centrality of the subject, only to gradually open it up in an exaltation of multiplicity and the "indistinct ...