Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture [Paperback]

These essays by leading scholars offer a new focus on the Renaissance via objects rather than subjects.This collection of essays brings together leading scholars of the early modern period, and offers a new focus on the literature and culture of the Renaissance. Traditionally, Renaissance studies has concentrated on the human subject, but these essays bring objects back into view.This collection of essays brings together leading scholars of the early modern period, and offers a new focus on the literature and culture of the Renaissance. Traditionally, Renaissance studies has concentrated on the human subject, but these essays bring objects back into view.This collection of essays brings together leading scholars of the early modern period, and offers a new focus on the literature and culture of the Renaissance. Traditionally, Renaissance studies has concentrated on the human subject; the essays collected here bring objects--purses, clothes, tapestries, houses, maps, feathers, tools, skulls--back into view. Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture puts things back into relation with people, eliciting not only new critical readings of key texts, but also new configurations of Renaissance culture.Introduction Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan and Peter Stallybrass; Part I. Priority of Objects: 1. The ideology of superfluous things: King Lear as period piece Margreta de Grazia; 2. Rude mechanicals Patricia Parker; 3. Spenser's domestic domain: poetry property and the Early Modern subject Louis A. Montrose; Part II. Materialisations: 4. Gendering the Crown Stephen Orgel; 5. The unauthored 1539 volume in which is printed the Hecatomphile, The Flowers of French Poetry and Other Soothing Things Nancy J. Vickers; 6. Dematerialisations: textile and textual properties in Ovid, Sandys, and Spenser Ann Rosalind Jones; Part III. Appropriations: 7. Freedom service and the trade in slaves: the problem of labour in Paradise Lost Maureen Quilligan; 8. Feathers and flies: Aphra Bl­