The Oxford History of Poetry in English Volume 4. Sixteenth-Century British Poetry

The Oxford History of Poetry in English is designed to offer a fresh, multi-voiced, and comprehensive analysis of 'poetry': from Anglo-Saxon culture through contemporary British, Irish, American, and Global culture, including English, Scottish, and Welsh poetry, Anglo-American colonial and post-colonial poetry, and poetry in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, India, Africa, Asia, and other international locales. The series both synthesises existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge research, employing a global team of expert contributors for each of the volumes.

Sixteenth-Century British Poetry features a history of the birth moment of modern 'English' poetry in greater detail than previous studies. It examines the literary transitions, institutional contexts, artistic practices, and literary genres within which poets compose their works. Each chapter combines an orientation to its topic and a contribution to the field. Specifically, the volume introduces a narrative about the advent of modern English poetry from Skelton to Spenser, attending to the events that underwrite the poets' achievements: Humanism; Reformation; monarchism and republicanism; colonization; print and manuscript; theatre; science; and companionate marriage. Featured are metre and form, figuration and allusiveness, and literary career, as well as a wide range of poets, from Wyatt, Surrey, and Isabella Whitney to Ralegh, Drayton, and Mary Herbert. Major works discussed include Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Marlowe's Hero and Leander, and Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Catherine Bates, Research Professor, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick,Patrick Cheney, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Penn State University

Catherine Bates is Research Professor in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick. She was Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, before moving to Warwick in 1995. She specialises in the poetry and poetics of sixteenth-century English poetry,
with a focus on lyric, epic, and romance. She has published five monographs on Renaissance literature, including Masculinity and the Hunt: Wyatt to Spenser, and On Not Defending Poetry: Defence and Indefensibility in Sidney's 'Defence of Poesy'. She is editor of The Cambridge Companion to The Epic,
and A Companion to Renaissance Poetry.


Patrick Cheney is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Penn State University, where he specialises in English Renaissance poetry and drama, with a focus on literary authorship. He has published seven monographs on Renaissance literature, including The Collected Poems
of Christopher Marlowe, Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, and Early Modern English Poetry: A Critical Companion. He is General Editor of the 14-volume Oxford History of Poetry in English.

1. Introduction, Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney
I. Transitions and Contexts
2. Transitions, Seth Lerer
3. Social Contexts, Andrew Hadfield
4. Professional Contexts, Helen Smith
II. Practices
5. Poetics, Patrick Cheney
6. Style, Jeff Dolven
7. Allusiveness, Colin Burrow
8. Figuration, Hannah Crawforth
9. Career, Daniel Juan Gil
III. Forms
10. Miscellany, Tome MacFaul
11. Lyric, Joseph Campana and Catherine Bates
12. Sonnet, Chris Stamatakis
13. Satire, Michelle O'Callaghan
14. Pastoral, Helen Cooper
15. Epic, Tamsin Badcoe
16. Minor Epic, Daniel Moss
17. History, Philip Schwyzer
18. Elegy, Andrea Brady
19. Complaint, Paul D. Stegner
20. Devotional Poetry, Claire McEachern
IV. Poets
21. Skelton, Jane Griffiths
22. Scots Poetry, Willy Maley and Theo van Heijnsbergen
23. Wyatt and Surrey, Cathy Shrank
24. Mid-Tudor Poetry, Danielle Clarke
25. Philip Sidney, Catherine Bates
26. Spenser: Shorter Poetry, Ayesha Ramachandran
27. Spenser: The Faerie Queen, Richard McCabe
28. Daniel, Drayton, Chapman, Katherine Cleland
29. Marlowe, Rachel Eisendrath
30. Shakespeare, Dympna Callaghan
31. Ralegh, Andrew Hiscock
32. Mary Sidney Herbert, Gillian Wright
V. Transitions
33. The Sixteenth to the Seventeenth Century, Michael Schoenfeldt