A Companion to the Global Renaissance

Featuring twenty one newly-commissioned essays, <i>A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion</i> 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. <ul> <li>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.</li> <li>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.</li> <li>Illustrates how twentieth-century globalization was the result of a lengthy and complex historical process linked to the emergence of capitalism and colonialism</li> <li>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</li> </ul>