A Companion to the Global Renaissance

Featuring twenty one newly–commissioned essays, A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion demonstrates how today′s globalization is the result of a complex and lengthy historical process that had its roots in England′s mercantile and cross–cultural interactions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An innovative collection that interrogates the global paradigm of our period and offers a new history of globalization by exploring its influences on English culture and literature of the early modern period. Moves beyond traditional notions of Renaissance history mainly as a revival of antiquity and presents a new perspective on England′s mercantile and cross–cultural interactions with the New and Old Worlds of the Americas, Africa, and the East, as well with Northern Europe. Illustrates how twentieth–century globalization was the result of a lengthy and complex historical process linked to the emergence of capitalism and colonialism Explores vital topics such as East–West relations and Islam; visual representations of cultural ′others′; gender and race struggles within the new economies and cultures; global drama on the cosmopolitan English stage, and many more