Refashioning Ben Jonson

This collection of multi-authored essays not only refashions and revises critical understandings of the early modern dramatist Ben Jonson and his canon of work, but is also self-reflexive about the process. It includes original essays by both established and emergent Jonson scholars, and employs materialist, feminist and queer theory in the production of its readings of Jonsonian playtexts and masques, familiar and otherwise. It is intended to encourage new approaches by students to this central figure from the Renaissance.

Interest in Ben Jonson is higher today than at any time since his death. This new collection offers detailed readings of all the major plays - Volpone, Epicene, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair - and the poems. It also provides significant insights into the court masques and the later plays which have only recently been rediscovered as genuinely engaging stage pieces.

This timely book challenges conventional critical wisdom about the work of Ben Jonson. Looking in particular at his Jacobean and Caroline plays, it explores his engagement with concepts of republicanism. Julie Sanders investigates notions of community in Jonson's stage worlds - his 'theatrical republics' - and reveals a Jonson to contrast with the traditional image of the writer as conservative, absolutist, misogynist, and essentially 'anti-theatrical'. The Jonson presented here is a positive celebrant of the social and political possibilities of theatre.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

An accessible, up-to-date introduction to the life and works of poet and dramatist Ben Jonson.

This book examines the centrality of envy in the works of Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's greatest literary rival.

This volume offers the broadest range of information on Jonson and his works, from background on contexts to details of recent interpretations of his plays.

This collection highlights exciting new areas of research related to Ben Jonson, including book history, social history and cultural geography.