Overview
- Provides a compelling argument for the need to re-think the status of armor, spoils, and trophies in relation to early modern cultural memory
- Turns to visual culture with a level of attentiveness to detail that is unprecedented in prior analyses of early modern military texts
- Deploys a breadth of critical perspectives by relevant early modern scholars such as Peter Stallybrass, Jonathan Gil Harris, and Heather James, as well as theorists like Derrida and Benjamin.
Part of the book series: Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700 (EMCSS)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Reviews
“Memories of War in Early Modern England is cultural criticism of the highest order. Harlan’s critical and thoroughly researched engagement with military clothing, cultural memory, and masculine violence sheds much needed light on neglected areas of early modern literary history and memory studies. Scholars and students of Renaissance drama, and of elegiac poetics especially, will be rewarded by Harlan’s rich trove of insights. Harlan interrogates with clarity and admirable scholarly rigor the imagined communities through which early modern England figured its national past and invested its present. This is a sophisticated and important contribution to historicized studies of material culture, most notably as regards nostalgia, counter-memory, and forgetfulness in Elizabethan England.” (William E. Engel, Nick B. Williams Professor of English, Sewanee University, USA)
“Beautifully written, Susan Harlan’s book offers a powerful, yet nuanced, account of the martial materials from which historical memory was constructed in early modern England. While much scholarship on warfare and memory has tended to focus on Elizabethan England and its relatively recent past, Harlan is more ambitious in her temporal concerns and far more attuned than most to the polytemporalities of the objects she examines.” (Patricia Cahill, Associate Professor of English, Emory University, USA)
“Susan Harlan's book joins a spate of recent studies (e.g., Simon Barker, Patricia Cahill) that engage early modern militarism in new and refreshing ways. Harlan makes fascinating connections among various texts and objects, and particularly establishes the militant materiality of the stage itself through theatrical properties necessary for powerful and persuasive drama. Harlan lays the groundwork for future important historical work regarding the golden age of Elizabeth that was often less than golden for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and pirates that had to fight the wars of the elite from at least 1585 to 1604.” (Curtis Breight, Associate Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh, USA)
“Harlan's carefully constructed investigation of the relation between masculinity, material culture, and memory should be of compelling interest to scholars involved in all these areas of study. Her wide-ranging project not only treats dramas by Marlowe and Shakespeare but also studies the mythology of the soldier through early modern memorials of that consummate courtier, Sir Philip Sidney. This work offers insight into conceptions of masculinity derived from military paraphernalia such as armor, trophies, and spoils, items that were already becoming matter for nostalgia in the early modern period.” (Jennifer A. Low, Associate Professor of English, Florida Atlantic University, USA and author of “Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture”)
“This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of the operations of nostalgia and the elegiac obsession with war and myth-making in early modern England. Harlan’s book studies the dramatic and textual practices of the representation of the armored male body and the sentiment of ’militant nostalgia’ as key elements of cultural-memory-making in some of the most beloved plays and other public shows from early modern London.” (Alan Shepard, President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor of English, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Memories of War in Early Modern England
Book Subtitle: Armor and Militant Nostalgia in Marlowe, Sidney, and Shakespeare
Authors: Susan Harlan
Series Title: Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58012-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-58849-4Published: 24 September 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-95467-4Published: 07 July 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-58012-2Published: 23 September 2016
Series ISSN: 2634-5897
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5900
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 317
Number of Illustrations: 9 b/w illustrations
Topics: Poetry and Poetics, Early Modern/Renaissance Literature, Literary Theory, Cultural Theory, British and Irish Literature, Literary History