The Literature of Early Modern Childhoods

The texts adapted for, printed for and marketed to children and youths in the 16th and 17th centuries, the books read by boys and girls in this period, and writings by Renaissance children constitute the literature of early modern childhoods. Yet traditional histories of children’s literature, posing narrow definitions of this genre, have largely overlooked this period. In the past decade, fresh work by early modern scholars attending to the diverse elements of the literature of early modern childhoods has flourished. This essay evaluates the absence of early modern children’s literature from early studies and considers the ways in which this recent work in Renaissance studies has vitally transformed the field through its exploration of alternative definitions of childhood and children’s literature. This work is at an early stage but it has placed the interconnections between early modern childhoods and children’s literature at the centre of both Renaissance studies and childhood studies and has established key topics for future research.

Rambling in the Field of Modern Identity: Some Speculations on Irish Traditional Music

This article argues that Irish “traditional” music is modern in its form and history, and explores the ramifications of this thesis for understanding of the peculiarities of Irish modernity and identity. The article exhaustively surveys the historiography of Irish traditional music and uniquely interprets this literature in relation to competing conceptions of identity and modernity articulated by Taylor, Appiah and Žižek. It also interprets Irish traditional music in relation to conceptions of Irish modernity articulated in a wide range of disciplines within Irish studies. Reflecting on the author’s lifelong engagement with traditional music performance, the article argues that the resilience of traditional music within the broader culture is connected to the peculiar character of Irish modernity, and that it suffers from problems of aesthetic exhaustion shared by much modern art in the contemporary conjuncture.

Teaching and Learning Guide for 'Modern Problems of Editing...'

Companion piece to my earlier article in Literature Conmpass: 'Modern Problems of Editing: The Two Texts of Doctor Faustus'. Provides a model for a module based on the topic of that article.

Crowd Control? Depictions of the Many in Anglo-Saxon Literature, with Particular Reference to the Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers

This article argues for the distinctiveness of the presentation of crowds in the Old English version of the Legend of the Seven Sleepers . In traditional Old English poetry, crowds are mostly conspicuous by their absence, since the social groupings portrayed are typically those ofthe lord's retinue and the fellowship of the hall. In writings deriving from Latin traditions (in Anglo-Latin, Old English prose and strands of Old English poetry) such as historiography andhagiography, crowds are presented in highly conventional terms based on literary models. The crowd scenes in the Legend of the Seven Sleepers , on the other hand, have an immediacy and urgency that seem based on real-life experience of Anglo-Saxon England rather than simply imitative of the work's Latin (ultimately Greek) source or of other literary models. Drawing upon crowd theory and historical studies, the article demonstrates that the crowds in this text are presented in “domesticated” Anglo-Saxon terms and may be seen as reflective of growing urbanization in late Anglo-Saxon England. “Real” crowds are glimpsed elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon literature but in the Legend of the Seven Sleepers they are particularly foregrounded; this text also presents the literature's liveliest picture of town life more generally.