Renaissance Go-Betweens: Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe

Andreas Höfele · Werner von Koppenfels

Dec 2011 · spectrum Literaturwissenschaft / spectrum Literature Book 2 · Walter de Gruyter

About this ebook

The volume analyses some of the travelling and bridge-building activities that went on in Renaissance Europe, mainly but not exclusively across the Channel, true to Montaigne's epoch-making program of describing 'the passage'. Its emphasis on Anglo-Continental relations ensures a firm basis in English literature, but its particular appeal lies in its European point of view, and in the perspectives it opens up into other areas of early modern culture, such as pictorial art, philosophy, and economics. The multiple implications of the go-between concept make for structured diversity.

The chapters of this book are arranged in three stages. Part 1 ('Mediators') focuses on influential go-betweens, both as groups, like the translators, and as individual mediators. The second part of this book ('Mediations') is concerned with individual acts of mediation, and with the 'mental topographies' they presuppose, reflect and redraw in their turn. Part 3 ('Representations') looks at the role of exemplary intermediaries and the workings of mediation represented on the early modern English stage.

Key features

• High quality anthology on phenomena of cultural exchange in the Renaissance era
• With contributions by outstanding international experts

About the author

Andreas Höfele is Professor of English at Munich University and a member of the Heidelberg and Bavarian Academies of Science and President of the German Shakespeare Society.

Werner von Koppenfels is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Munich University and a member of the German Academy of Language and Literature.