The Death Arts in Renaissance England

Expanding the 'death arts' beyond mere mourning and loss, this anthology recuperates the generative power of Renaissance mortality.

This critical anthology, an ideal resource for researchers, instructors, and students, outlines the cultural contexts in which people grappled with their mortality in Renaissance England. Illuminating death's intersections with gender, sex, and race, this book offers indispensable insights into living with death in early modern England.The first-ever critical anthology of the death arts in Renaissance England, this book draws together over 60 extracts and 20 illustrations to establish and analyse how people grappled with mortality in the 16th and 17th centuries. As well as providing a comprehensive resource of annotated and modernized excerpts, this engaging study includes commentary on authors and overall texts, discussions of how each excerpt is constitutive and expressive of the death arts, and suggestions for further reading. The extended Introduction takes into account death's intersections with print, gender, sex, and race, surveying the period's far-reaching preoccupation with, and anticipatory reflection upon, the cessation of life. For researchers, instructors, and students interested in medieval and early modern history and literature, the Reformation, memory studies, book history, and print culture, this indispensable resource provides at once an entry point into the field of early modern death studies and a springboard for further research.