Description: Worldmaking takes many forms in early modern literature and thus challenges any single interpretive approach. The essays in this collection investigate the material stuff of the world in Spenser, Cary, and Marlowe; the sociable bonds of authorship, sexuality, and sovereignty in Shakespeare and others; and the universal status of spirit, gender, and empire in the worlds of Vaughan, Donne, and the dastan (tale) of Chouboli, a Rajasthani princess. Together, these essays make the case that to address what it takes to make a world in the early modern period requires the kinds of thinking exemplified by theory.
Brief description: Marcie Frank is Professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal.
Review Quotes: From Spenser's toxic slime to Persian story theater, with way-stations that include Marlovian foot-stools, Horatian friendship, and Paracelsian ecology, this sparkling and timely collection of essays visits a dazzling range of world-making aspirations in Renaissance and early modern literature.-----Julia Reinhard Lupton, The University of California, Irvine