Anonymity in Early Modern England: 'What's In A Name?' [Paperback]

Expanding the scholarly conversation about anonymity in Renaissance England, this essay collection explores the phenomenon in all its variety of methods and genres as well as its complex relationship with its alter ego, attribution studies. Contributors address such questions as these: What were the consequences of publishing and reading anonymous texts for Renaissance writers and readers? What cultural constraints and subject positions made anonymous publication in print or manuscript a strategic choice? What are the possible responses to Renaissance anonymity in contemporary classrooms and scholarly debate? The volume opens with essays investigating particular texts-poetry, plays, and pamphlets-and the inflection each genre gives to the issue of anonymity. The collection then turns to consider more abstract consequences of anonymity: its function in destabilizing scholarly assumptions about authorship, its ethical ramifications, and its relationship to attribution studies.Expanding the scholarly conversation about Renaissance anonymity and attribution studies, this collection explores the phenomenon of anonymous publication in all its variety of methods and genres. The volume opens with essays investigating particular English texts and the inflection each genre gives to the issue of nameless authoring. Later chapters consider more abstract consequences of anonymity, including its function in destabilizing scholarly assumptions about authorship; its ethical ramifications; and its relationship to attribution studies.Janet Wright Starner is associate professor of English at Wilkes University, USA Barbara Howard Traister is professor of English at Lehigh University, USA'It is true that anonymous works receive less attention than those works that can be attributed to a canonical author, and this collection succeeds in suggesting ways in which carefully selected anonymous works may be usefully approached thematically and historically, and as specific genres.' Renaisslc¦