Catherine Nicholson

A Most Particular Life

The diary of the sixteenth-century physician Felix Platter is without precedent in early modern literature.

An Exorcism

The Cares of State

The scholar Nan Z. Da reveals how naturally Chinese history can be read through the cruelty and corruption in King Lear.

A Milton for All Seasons

The many radical rereadings of Paradise Lost

Livelier Than the Living

In the Renaissance, reading became both a passion and a pose of detachment—for those who could afford it—from the pursuits of wealth and power.

Where the Mistery Lurkes

“Change remains the lifeblood of literary tradition.”

Theater for a New Audience

From the beginning, the First Folio helped to fashion Shakespeare’s work into a canon of vernacular drama.

Try This at Home

Right Busy with Sticks and Spales

The historian Nicholas Orme lets us glimpse what the sixteenth century was like for children.

Improving Paradise

For Milton, innocence was interesting—a significant innovation on his biblical source material.

Who’s Afraid of Edmund Spenser?

The Triumph of Mutabilitie

Edmund Spenser’s long, daunting The Faerie Queen combines political allegory with some of the most flickering, ambiguous poetry in English.