William E. Engel

Grant Williams

Rory Loughnane

This volume is the first critical anthology of contemporary writings and illustrations about memory in Renaissance England, featuring over seventy texts and over twenty illustrations. It is a valuable resource for students of the memory arts, Renaissance literature, the history of ideas, book history, and art history.

A Critical Anthology

The Memory Arts in Renaissance England

"This is the first book to demonstrate how mnemotechnical cultural commonplaces can be used to account for the look, style, and authorized content of some of the most influential books produced in early modern Britain. In his hybrid role as stationer, publisher, entrepreneur, and author, John Day, master printer of England's Reformation, produced the premier navigation handbook, state-approved catechism and metrical psalms, Book of Martyrs, England's first printed emblem book, and Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book. By virtue of finely honed book trade skills, dogged commitment to evangelical nation-building, and astute business acumen (including going after those who infringed his privileges), Day mobilized the typographical imaginary to establish what amounts to-and still remains-a potent and viable Protestant Memory Art"--

John Day and the Fabrication of a Protestant Memory Art

The Printer as Author in Early Modern English Book History

Hamlet Among the Tombs

The Shakespearean Death Arts

Shades of Memory

Death and Drama in Renaissance England

While other scholars have remarked on the influence of seventeenth-century literature on Melville and Poe, Engel is the first to explore how their close readings of early modern texts influenced their compositional practice. Rather than simply offering an account of what these authors read, Engel focuses principally on the overlapping rhetorical and iconic assumptions of the Art of Memory and its relation to chiasmus in order to illustrate the authors' profound debt to the past.

Memory, Melancholy, and the Emblematic Tradition

Early Modern Poetics in Melville and Poe

William E. Engel

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