Reading Shakespeares Poems in Early Modern England [Paperback]

This is the first comprehensive study of early modern texts, readings, and readers of Shakespeare's poems in print and manuscript, Reading Shakespeare's Poems in Early Modern England makes a compelling contribution both to Shakespeare studies and the history of the book. Examining gendered readerships and the use of erotic works, reading practises and manuscript culture, textual forms and transmission, literary taste and the canonisation of Shakespeare, this book argues that historicist criticism can no longer ignore histories of reading.Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction Ladies Reading 'Bawdy Geare': Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis , and the Early Modern Woman Reader Light Literature and Gentlemen Readers: Venus and Adonis , Textual Transmission, and the Construction of Poetic Meaning The Malleable Poetic Text: Narrative, Authorship, and the Transmission of Lucrece Textual Transmission and the Transformation of Desire: The Sonnets , A Lover's Complaint and The Passionate Pilgrim Afterword Bibliography Index

'Roberts' study of the early modern reception of Shakespeare's poems challenges current assumptions about textual authority as well as aesthetic taste. In her use of manuscript miscellanies, marginalia, and often neglected printed works to reveal the diverse agencies of readers, Roberts contributes significantly to the history of the book'. - Mary Ellen Lamb

'In this gem of a study, Sasha Roberts uses the early modern history of the publication, manuscript transmission, and reading of Shakespeare's poems to demonstrate the remarkable flexibility of these works in a literary system that encouraged recipients and collectors of texts to appropriate them for their own serious or recreational uses... This study is a very important contribution to early modern literary studies'. - Professor Arthur F.Marotti, Wayne State University

'Sasha Roberts details the enormous variety and creativity of early modern readel£ª