A Companion to the Global Renaissance English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion

by Singh, Jyotsna G.

• ISBN13: 9781405154765
• ISBN10: 1405154764
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-26
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Featuring twenty one newly-commissioned essays, A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion demonstrates how today's globalization is the result of a complex and lengthy historical process that had its roots in England's mercantile and cross-cultural interactions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An innovative collection that interrogates the global paradigm of our period and offers a new history of globalization by exploring its influences on English culture and literature of the early modern period. Moves beyond traditional notions of Renaissance history mainly as a revival of antiquity and presents a new perspective on England's mercantile and cross-cultural interactions with the New and Old Worlds of the Americas, Africa, and the East, as well with Northern Europe. Illustrates how twentieth-century globalization was the result of a lengthy and complex historical process linked to the emergence of capitalism and colonialism Explores vital topics such as East-West relations and Islam; visual representations of cultural 'others'; gender and race struggles within the new economies and cultures; global drama on the cosmopolitan English stage, and many more

Author Biography

Jyotsna G. Singh is a Professor at Michigan State University, where she teaches early modern literature and culture, post-colonial theory, and gender and race studies. Her published works include Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogues: 'Discovery' of India in the Language of Colonialism (1996); The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics (co-authored, with Dympna Callaghan and Lorraine Helms, 1994); and Travel Knowledge: European 'Discoveries' in the Early Modern Period (co-edited with Ivo Kamps, 2001). She has received several research fellowships, including at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Queen Mary, University of London.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Global Renaissance: Jyotsna Singh (Michigan StateUniversity

Mapping the Global

The New Globalism: Transcultural Commerce, Global Systems Theory, and SpenserÆs Mammon

öTravailingö Theory: Global Flows of Labor and the Enclosure of the Subject

Islam and TamburlaineÆs World-picture

Traveling Nowhere: Global Utopias in the Early Modern Period

öContact Zonesö

The Benefits of a Warm Study: The Resistance to Travel before Empire

öApes of Imitationö: Imitation and Identity in Sir Thomas RoeÆs Embassy to India

A Multinational Corporation: Foreign Labor in the London East India Company

Where was Iceland in 1600?

East by North-east: The English among the Russians, 1553û1603

The Politics of Identity: William Adams, John Saris, and the English East India CompanyÆs Failure in Japan

The Queer Moor: Bodies, Borders, and Barbary Inns

Networks of Exchange: Traveling Objects

Guns and Gawds: Elizabethan EnglandÆs Infidel Trade

Cassio, Cash, and the ôInfidel 0ö: Arithmetic, Double-entry Book-keeping, and OthelloÆs Unfaithful Accounts

Seeds of Sacrifice: Amaranth, the Gardens of Tenochtitlan and SpenserÆs Faerie Queene

öSo Pale, So Lame, So Lean, So Ruinousö: The Circulation of Foreign Coins in Early Modern England

Canary, Bristoles, Londres, Ingleses: English Traders in the Canaries in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

öThe Whole Globe of the Earthö: Almanacs and Their Readers

Cesare Vecellio, Venetian Writer and Art-book Cosmopolitan

The Globe Staged

BettriceÆs Monkey: Staging Exotica in Early Modern London Comedy

The Maltese Factor: The Poetics of Place in The Jew of Malta and The Knight of Malta

Local/Global Pericles: International Storytelling, Domestic Social Relations, Capitalism

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