Literary Form After Matter 1550–1700: Experiments in Close Reading

This collection demonstrates how, in early modern literary studies, close reading has its greatest force when we bring our attentive practices of textual analysis not only to the form but also the matter of our texts. The short, innovative essays included in this collection use original research to show how both form and materiality in the early modern period are inextricably bound up with each other, as well as with questions of embodiment and exclusion, sexual desire and colonial thinking. The essays illuminate the conditions of how we do early modern studies now, from issues about archival access in the postcolonial world to the core practices on which our discipline is based. Literary Form After Matter provides a defence of the shared, detailed attention that the practice of close reading demands, and the rich rewards it can offer.