Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture

These essays by leading scholars offer a new focus on the Renaissance via objects rather than subjects.

Traditionally, Renaissance studies have concentrated on the human subject. This collection of original essays by leading scholars brings objects - purses, clothes, tapestries, houses, maps, feathers, tools, skulls - back into view. The result is an entirely new view of Renaissance literature and culture.This collection of original essays brings together some of the most prominent figures in new historicist and cultural materialist approaches to the early modern period, and offers a new focus on the literature and culture of the Renaissance. Traditionally, Renaissance studies have concentrated on the human subject. The essays collected here bring objects - purses, clothes, tapestries, houses, maps, feathers, communion wafers, tools, pages, skulls - back into view. As a result, the much-vaunted early modern subject ceases to look autonomous and sovereign, but is instead caught up in a vast and uneven world of objects which he and she makes, owns, values, imagines, and represents. This book puts things back into relation with people; in the process, it elicits new critical readings, and new cultural configurations.