Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson

Laureations

Edited by Kathy Lavezzo and Roze Hentschell - Contributions by Leonard Barkan; Frances Dolan; Heather Dubrow; Edwin M. Duval; Margaret Ferguson; Barbara Fuchs; Patricia Fumerton; Andrew Hadfield; Patricia Clare Ingham; Andrew McRae; Shannon Miller; James Nohrnberg and Michael O'Connell

This book brings together new essays by leading cultural critics who have been influenced by the groundbreaking scholarship of Richard Helgerson. The original essays penned for this anthology evince the ongoing impact of Helgerson’s work in major critical debates including national identity, literary careerism, and studies of form. Analyzing not only early modern but also medieval literary texts, the pieces that comprise Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson: Laureations respond to both Helgerson’s more famous scholarly works and the whole range of his critical corpus, from his earliest work on prodigality to his latest writings on mid-sixteenth century European poets. The interdisciplinary, transnational, and comparativist spirit of Helgerson’s criticism is reflected in the essays, as is his commitment to studies of multiple genres that nevertheless attend to the particularities of form.Contributors offer new interpretations of several of Shakespeare’s plays—Hamlet, I Henry IV, The Tempest, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear—and other dramas such as Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, the anonymous drama The London Prodigal, and Stephen Greenblatt and John Mee’s contemporary play Cardenio. In keeping with Helgerson’s comparativist turn, the volume includes analyses of Joachim Du Bellay’s poetry and Donato Gianotti’s discussion of The Divine Comedy. Prose works featured in the volume encompass More’s Utopia and Isaac Walton’s The Compleat Angler. Spenser’s early poetry and the medieval romance Floris and Blanchflour also receive new readings.

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 310 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61149-381-8 • Hardback • December 2011 • $128.00 • (£98.00)

978-1-61149-382-5 • eBook • December 2011 • $121.50 • (£94.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / General, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Shakespeare, Philosophy / Criticism

Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson

Laureations

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This book brings together new essays by leading cultural critics who have been influenced by the groundbreaking scholarship of Richard Helgerson. The original essays penned for this anthology evince the ongoing impact of Helgerson’s work in major critical debates including national identity, literary careerism, and studies of form. Analyzing not only early modern but also medieval literary texts, the pieces that comprise Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson: Laureations respond to both Helgerson’s more famous scholarly works and the whole range of his critical corpus, from his earliest work on prodigality to his latest writings on mid-sixteenth century European poets. The interdisciplinary, transnational, and comparativist spirit of Helgerson’s criticism is reflected in the essays, as is his commitment to studies of multiple genres that nevertheless attend to the particularities of form.Contributors offer new interpretations of several of Shakespeare’s plays—Hamlet, I Henry IV, The Tempest, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear—and other dramas such as Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, the anonymous drama The London Prodigal, and Stephen Greenblatt and John Mee’s contemporary play Cardenio. In keeping with Helgerson’s comparativist turn, the volume includes analyses of Joachim Du Bellay’s poetry and Donato Gianotti’s discussion of The Divine Comedy. Prose works featured in the volume encompass More’s Utopia and Isaac Walton’s The Compleat Angler. Spenser’s early poetry and the medieval romance Floris and Blanchflour also receive new readings.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 310 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61149-381-8 • Hardback • December 2011 • $128.00 • (£98.00)

978-1-61149-382-5 • eBook • December 2011 • $121.50 • (£94.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / General, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Shakespeare, Philosophy / Criticism

Author

Roze Hentschell is associate professor of English at Colorado State University.

Kathy Lavezzo is associate professor of English at the University of Iowa.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Roze Hentschell and Kathy Lavezzo
Part I: Community, Colonialism, and Nationhood
1. Influence, Appropriation, Piracy: The Place of Spain in English Literary History by Barbara Fuchs
2. Idleness, Humanist Industry, and English Colonial Activity in Thomas More’s “fruitfull, pleasant,” “wittie” and “profitable” Utopia by Shannon Miller
3. Amorous Scholastics: The Guilty Pleasures of the Middle English Floris
and Blauncheflour by Patricia Clare Ingham
Part II: Dramatic Forms
4. Delivery Rooms: Towards a Reconsideration of the Conclusion of The Tempest by Heather Dubrow
5. One Head is Better than Two: The Aphoristic Afterlife of Renaissance Tragedy by Frances E. Dolan
6. About Suffering, and on Dying: Shakespeare’s Re-invention of a Theater of Eschatological Identity in King Lear by James Nohrnberg
Part III: Travel and Geography
7. Dante, Michelangelo, and What We Talk about When We Talk about Poetry by Leonard Barkan
8. The Pleasures of the Land in Restoration England: The Social Politics of The Compleat Angler by Andrew McRae
Part IV: The Literary Career
9. Rival Laureates and Multiple Monuments: Collaborative Self-Crowning in France by Edwin M. Duval
10. Du Bellay’s “Source de La Meduse” by Margaret Ferguson
11. The Jacobean Prodigals by Michael O’Connell
12. Religious Affiliation in Elizabethan London: Richard Mulcaster, Edmund Spenser, and The Family of Love by Andrew Hadfield
Afterword: Helgersonland by Patricia Fumerton
Richard Helgerson: A Bibliography
About the Contributors