Sixteen scholars of Renaissance literature collaborate in this volume to add new critical dimensions to our understandings of this long-overlooked genre. The prose fiction writers of the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries practiced a wide variety of styles, imitated numerous models, sought to deal with serious questions about the human condition, courted clients through delight, and taught them with precepts. For us, their works raise many questions about their conventions, origins, and place in early English society. The essays in this volume deal with the marketing of fiction, its diverse audiences, principles of characterization, its modes and genres from pastoral to utopian, from literature for the commons to literature for the salons. Three essays deal with that most enigmatic of works, The Unfortunate Traveler. Others deal with Sidney’s “Arcadias,” Deloney’s Jack of Newbury, Lodge’s Margarite of America, and The Bachelor’s Banquet. There are studies of travel literature, euphuism, Italian models. Together, these articles form a broad compendium of critical methodologies and areas of research, a collection worthy to serve as a companion critical volume to the texts published in the Riche Series.

The Editor

Donald Beecheris Professor of English at Carleton University, Ottawa.