Imagining Inheritance From Chaucer to Shakespeare

A study of the idea of inheritance in late medieval and early modern imaginative literature that shows continuities and coherence across the traditional divide of these periods.

List of contents

• Introduction: Imagining Premodern Inheritance


• Part I. Fictions of the Will


• 1: 'A Very Perfect Forme of a Will': The Fictional Testament


• 2: Out of Bounds: Testamentary Fiction From The Tale of Gamelyn to As You Like It


• Part II. Natural Philosophy


• 3: Petrified Unrest: Succession and Descent in Lancastrian Verse


• 4: The Home-Bred Enemy: Inheritance and Constancy in Tudor and Stuart Writing


• Part III. World Histories


• 5: Heavenly Inheritances


• 6: The System of the World: Inheritance, Money, Modernity


• Epilogue

About the author

Alex Davis is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance (2003) and Renaissance Historical Fiction (2011).

Summary

A study of the idea of inheritance in late medieval and early modern imaginative literature that shows continuities and coherence across the traditional divide of these periods.

Additional text

In Imagining Inheritance from Chaucer to Shakespeare, Alex Davis offers a sweeping and deft survey of 'inheritance' across poetry, drama, prose, and even paintings from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, extending to the genealogical endeavours of the noblewoman Anne Clifford.

Product details

• Authors: Alex Davis, Alex (Senior Lecturer Davis, Davis Alex
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 29.02.2020
• EAN: 9780198851424
• ISBN: 978-0-19-885142-4
• No. of pages: 312
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Classical linguistics / literary studies; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Ancient & Classical, LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance, DRAMA / Shakespeare, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, Shakespeare Studies & Criticism, Literary studies: poetry and poets, Relating to Shakespeare / Shakespearean