Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics, and Society in English Renaissance Drama - Hardcover

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Michael Neill is professor of English at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He is the author of Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy and editor of the Oxford Shakespeare edition of Antony and Cleopatra.

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Written by one of the most influential scholars in the field of English Renaissance drama, Putting History to the Question marks a critical step beyond the orthodoxy of New Historicism. Michael Neill's abundant body of critical writings -- previously unpublished or available only in a series of hard-to-find journals -- comprise a singularly eloquent exploration of the ways in which literary texts engage the world around them.

Putting History to the Question is the result of Neill's ongoing investigation of how literature provides a revealing portrait of nation, social order, and empire, and how the flow of literary discourse affects the progress of history. Covering dramatic works by Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, and others -- and reflecting upon subjects ranging from social attitudes toward racial difference and adultery to the politics of mercantilism and the hierarchy of master/servant relationships -- the book reenergizes the discussion of Renaissance drama and history.

In exposing the complex and fluid interdependence of literature and history. Neill's book avoids the common practice of elevating literature above the world in which it is produced and read and the equally widespread approach that casts literary texts as mere barometers of political currents. For the many scholars and students accustomed to reading from photocopies of Neill's seminal writings, Putting History to the Question will be a valuable addition to the critical library.