The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature Volume 2: 1558-1660

The Oxford History of Classical Reception (OHCREL) is designed to offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge new research, employing an international team of expert contributors for each of the five volumes. OHCREL endeavours to interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate, conventional assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of canon-formation, and the relations between literary and non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own cultural context. This second volume, and third to appear in the series, covers the years 1558-1660, and explores the reception of the ancient genres and authors in English Renaissance literature, engaging with the major, and many of the minor, writers of the period, including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, and Jonson. Separate chapters examine the Renaissance institutions and contexts which shape the reception of antiquity, and an annotated bibliography provides substantial material for further reading.

1 - Introduction
2 - The Classics in Humanism, Education, and Scholarship
3 - The Availability of the Classics: Readers, Writers, Translation, Performance
4 - Classical Rhetoric in English
5 - The Classics in Literary Criticism
6 - Classics and Christianity
7 - Women Writers and the Classics
8 - Cultural Contexts
9 - Pastoral and Georgic
10 - Epic Poetry
11 - Elizabethan Minor Epic
12 - The Epistolary Tradition
13 - Prose Romance
14 - Elegy, Hymn, Epithalamium, Ode: Some Renaissance Reinterpretations
15 - Complaint, Epigram, and Satire
16 - Tragedy
17 - Comedy
18 - Tragicomedy
19 - Historiography and Biography
20 - Discursive and Speculative Writing
21 - Homer
22 - Plato
23 - Virgil and Ovid
24 - Horace
25 - Spenser
26 - Marlowe
27 - Shakespeare
28 - Jonson
29 - Early Milton

Patrick Cheney is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University. He has been a Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, University of Oxford, and a recipient of the Faculty Scholar Medal at Pennsylvania State University for research in the humanities. He is General Editor of the Oxford History of Poetry in English, and a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His publications have focused on the reception of classical ideas of authorship. Philip Hardie is a Senior Research Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Honorary Professor of Latin at the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and was Corpus Christi Professor of the Latin Language and Literature at the University of Oxford (2002-6). He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Thessaloniki, and was the recipient of the Premio Internazionale Virgilio (Mantova) in 2012. He has published extensively both on ancient Latin literature and on its reception.