Literary and visual Ralegh

Edited by Christopher Armitage

Publication date:

31 October 2013

Length of book:

416 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9780719087714

This collection of essays by scholars from Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Taiwan covers a wide range of topics about Ralegh's diversified career and achievements. Some of the essays shed light on less familiar facets such as Ralegh as a father and as he is represented in paintings, statues, and in movies; others re-examine him as poet, historian, as a controversial figure in Ireland during Elizabeth's reign, and look at his complex relationship with and patronage of Edmund Spenser. A recurrent topic is the Hatfield Manuscript in Ralegh's handwriting, which contains his long, unfinished poem 'The Ocean to Cynthia', usually considered a lament about his rejection by Queen Elizabeth after she learned of his secret marriage to one of her ladies-in-waiting.

The book is appropriate for students of Elizabethan-Jacobean history and literature.

Among the contributors are well-known scholars of Ralegh and his era, including James Nohrenberg, Anna Beer, Thomas Herron, Alden Vaughan and Andrew Hiscock.

Introduction: Of letters and the man: Sir Walter Ralegh – Christopher M. Armitage, Thomas Herron and Julian Lethbridge
1. Ralegh in ruins, Ralegh on the rocks: Sir Wa’ter’s two books of mutabilitie and their subject’s allegorical presence in select Spenserean narratives and complaints – James Nohrnberg
2. Spenser and Ralegh: friendship and literary patronage – Wayne Erickson
3. Love’s ‘emperye’: Ralegh’s ‘Ocean to Scinthia’, Spenser’s ‘Colin Clouts Come Home Againe’ and The Faerie Queene IV.vii in colonial context – Thomas Herron
4. ‘Bellphebes course is now observde no more’: Ralegh, Spenser and the literary politics of Cynthia holograph – Anna Beer
5. Replying to Ralegh’s “The Nymph’s Reply”: allusion, anti-pastoral, and four centuries of pastoral invitations – Hannibal Hamlin
6. “Moving on the Waters”: metaphor and mental space in Ralegh’s History of the World – Michael Booth
7. Water Ralegh’s liquid narrative: The Discoverie of Guiana – Lowell Duckert
8. Ralegh, Harriot, and Anglo-American ethnography – Alden T. Vaughan
9. 'most fond and fruitlesse warre’: Ralegh and the call to arms – Andrew Hiscock
10. Ralegh’s “As You Came from the Holy Land” and the rival virgin queens of late sixteenth-century England – Gary Waller
11. Patrilineal Ralegh – Judith Owens
12. Ralegh’s image in art – Dr. Vivienne Westbrook
13. Where’s Walter? The screen incarnations of Sir Walter Ralegh – Susan Anderson
Sir Walter Ralegh bibliography (1986–2010) – Christopher M. Armitage
Index

Professor Armitage presents an admirable bibliography (1986-2010) of Ralegh's works. This is a real asset and will certainly advance Ralegh scholarship.