Thomas Nashe and Literary Performance
By (Author) Chloe Kathleen Preedy
Edited by Rachel Willie
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press
1st August 2024
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Literary studies: plays and playwrights
Theatre studies
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
828.309
Hardback
224
Width 138mm, Height 216mm
As an instigator of debate and a defender of tradition, a man of letters and a popular hack, a writer of erotica and a spokesman for bishops, an urbane metropolitan and a celebrant of local custom, the various textual performances of Thomas Nashe have elicited, and continue to provoke, a range of contradictory reactions. Nashes often incongruous authorial characteristics suggest that, as a King of Pages, he not only courted controversy but also deliberately cultivated a variety of public personae, acquiring a reputation more slippery than the herrings he celebrated in print. Collectively, the essays in this book illustrate how Nashe excelled at textual performance but his personae became a contested site as readers actively participated and engaged in the reception of Nashes public image and his works.
Chloe Kathleen Preedy is Associate Professor in Early Modern Drama at the University of Exeter
Rachel Willie is Reader in Early Modern Literary Studies at Liverpool John Moores University