Literary Research and the British Renaissance and Early Modern Period: Strategies and Sources

399 Pages·2010·4.076 MB·English

by  Jennifer Bowers, Peggy Keeran

Literary Research: Strategies and Sources
Series Editors: Peggy Keeran & Jennifer Bowers
Every literary age presents scholars with both predictable and unique research
challenges. This series fills a gap in the field of reference literature by featur-
ing research strategies and by recommending the best tools for conducting
specialized period and national literary research. Emphasizing research meth-
odology, each series volume takes into account the unique challenges inher-
ent in conducting research of that specific literary period and outlines the best
practices for researching within it. Volumes place the research process within
the period’s historical context and use a narrative structure to analyze and
compare print and electronic reference sources. Following an introduction
to online searching, chapters will typically cover these types of resources:
general literary reference materials; library catalogs; print and online bib-
liographies, indexes, and annual reviews; scholarly journals; contemporary
reviews; period journals and newspapers; microform and digital collections;
manuscripts and archives; and Web resources. Additional or alternative
chapters might be included to highlight a particular research problem or to
examine other pertinent period or national literary resources.
1. Literary Research and the British Romantic Era by Peggy Keeran and
Jennifer Bowers, 2005.
2. Literary Research and the Era of American Nationalism and
Romanticism by Angela Courtney, 2008.
3. Literary Research and American Modernism Era by Robert N. Matuozzi
and Elizabeth B. Lindsay, 2008.
4. Literary Research and the American Realism and Naturalism Period by
Linda L. Stein and Peter J. Lehu, 2009.
5. Literary Research and Irish Literature by J. Greg Matthews, 2009.
6. Literary Research and the Literatures of Australia and New Zealand by
H. Faye Christenberry and Angela Courtney, 2010.
7. Literary Research and British Modernism by Alison M. Lewis, 2010.
8. Literary Research and the British Renaissance and Early Modern Period
by Jennifer Bowers and Peggy Keeran, 2010.

Literary Research and the
British Renaissance and
Early Modern Period
Strategies and Sources
Jennifer Bowers
Peggy Keeran
Literary Research: Strategies and Sources, No. 8
THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.
Lanham (cid:129) Toronto (cid:129) Plymouth, UK
2010
Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.scarecrowpress.com
Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Bowers and Peggy Keeran
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bowers, Jennifer, 1962–
Literary research and the British Renaissance and early modern period : strategies and
sources / Jennifer Bowers, Peggy Keeran.
p. cm. — (Literary research: strategies and sources ; no. 8)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 978-0-8108-5697-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7428-2 (ebook)
1. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—Research—Methodology.
2. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—Information resources. I. Keeran,
Peggy, 1959–. II. Title.
PR421.B68 2010
820.9'003—dc22 2009048527
(cid:2) ™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
1 Basics of Online Searching 1
2 General Literary Reference Resources 20
3 Library Catalogs 45
4 Print and Electronic Bibliographies, Indexes, and Annual Reviews 72
5 Scholarly Journals 96
6 Seventeenth-Century Periodicals 118
7 Contemporary Reception 154
8 Manuscripts and Archives 183
9 Genre 220
10 Translations and Lexicons 251
11 Microforms and Digital Collections 265
12 Web Resources 293
13 Researching a Thorny Problem 333
Bibliography 349
Index 355
About the Authors 383
v

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Martin Dillon, our editor at Scarecrow Press, for his
valuable recommendations regarding this book and for the Literary Research:
Strategies and Sources series. We’d also like to thank Ed Kurdyla, former ed-
itorial director at Scarecrow, for his support of the series; Blair Andrews, as-
sociate acquisitions editor, who helped with finding the painting on the cover;
Kellie Hagan, our production editor, who patiently worked through all the fi-
nal details with us; and Barbara Berliner, our wonderful indexer. The authors
of the other volumes in the series inspired us, and we challenged ourselves to
meet the high quality of their work.
Scott Howard and Betty Meagher provided us with feedback about the
content of the book, as well as expert advice when we needed to clarify cer-
tain details.
Chris Alexander was a calm and steady presence during the mad rush to
get the manuscript completed and was instrumental in formatting the images
properly and addressing other last-minute details.
Finally, we’d like to thank Dean Nancy Allen for granting us time to work
on the project, and our colleagues for discussing aspects of the content with
us. We truly appreciate the encouragement, patience, and support of our fami-
lies, friends, and colleagues throughout.
vii

Introduction
Literary Research and the British Renaissance and Early Modern Period:
Strategies and Sources sets out to cover the best practices and to describe
important reference resources, both print and electronic, that can be used in
conducting literary research on this era. Although the primary emphasis is on
literature produced in England, the guide also covers literature from Scotland,
Wales, and Ireland. Recognizing that every literary era presents scholars
with particular challenges, this volume seeks to address specific research
characteristics integral to studying the period, including a more inclusive
canon and the predominance of the Bard, a dual environment of print and
manuscript production, the challenges of reading early modern handwriting,
a lack of reviewing media, the role of translations, and researching nonstan-
dardized genres. Central to our volume and to literary research of the era
are the equally valid approaches to studying this literature through the more
traditional “renaissance” lens, or through the varying theoretical approaches
falling under the rubric “early modern.”
A cursory glance at recent academic publishers’ catalogs demonstrates the
concurrent use of the terms renaissance and early modern. Sometimes both
terms are even employed in the same title, such as Rhetorical Affect in Early
Modern Writing: Renaissance Passions Reconsidered (Palgrave MacMillan,
2003) or Renaissance Tropologies: The Cultural Imagination of Early Mod-
ern England (Duquesne University Press, 2008). Our intention in writing a
guide to Renaissance and early modern British literature that includes both
terms is to take into account the two dominant approaches used by scholars
to studying the literature written during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. We understand the term renaissance to be used for traditional critical
approaches to the era with research grounded in the classical foundations of
humanism, while early modern emphasizes the cultural, political, historical,
ix