Overview

For many people in early modern England the Reformation turned the past into another country: the 'merry world'. Nostalgia for this imaginary time, both widespread and widely contested, was commodified by a burgeoning entertainment industry. This book offers a new perspective on the making of 'Merry England', arguing that it was driven both by the desires of audiences and the marketing strategies of writers, publishers and playing companies. Nostalgia in Print and Performance juxtaposes plays with ballads and pamphlets, just as they were experienced by their first consumers. It argues that these commercial fictions played a central role in promoting and shaping nostalgia. At the same time, the fantasy of the merry world offered a powerfully affective language for conceptualising longing. For playwrights like Shakespeare and others writing for the commercial stage, it became a way to think through the dynamics of audience desire and the aesthetics of repetition.

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9781108482271

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Advance praise: 'Harriet Phillips' study is an exceptionally fine work. Her readings of individual literary texts, canonical and non-canonical alike, are consistently sharp, and are elegantly placed at the service of the wider argument. This book will be ranked among the most important recent studies of the place of the past in early modern England.' Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter

'Harriet Phillips' study is an exceptionally fine work. Her readings of individual literary texts, canonical and non-canonical alike, are consistently sharp, and are elegantly placed at the service of the wider argument. This book will be ranked among the most important recent studies of the place of the past in early modern England.' Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter 'Harriet Phillips' study is an exceptionally fine work. Her readings of individual literary texts, canonical and non-canonical alike, are consistently sharp, and are elegantly placed at the service of the wider argument. This book will be ranked among the most important recent studies of the place of the past in early modern England.' Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter

'Harriet Phillips' study is an exceptionally fine work. Her readings of individual literary texts, canonical and non-canonical alike, are consistently sharp, and are elegantly placed at the service of the wider argument. This book will be ranked among the most important recent studies of the place of the past in early modern England.' Philip Schwyzer Professor of Renaissance Literature, University of Exeter Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter

Author Information

Harriet Phillips is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in English at Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on literature, popular culture and book history between 1500 and 1800. Her work has appeared in Shakespeare, Review of English Studies, Renaissance Studies, Parergon and Studies in Philology. She co-edited A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts (2018), and is co-editing Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (forthcoming).

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