Style in the Renaissance

Reviews / Votes

Patricia Canning's adventurous interdisciplinary study brings together in new and exciting ways the two fields of linguistics and literary criticism in her examination of selected texts by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The range and detail of her analysis, evident especially in her microscopic examination of linguistic forms, cultural assumptions, and historical contexts in plays by Shakespeare and Middleton, and in the poetry of George Crashaw, is impressive. Here is a rare combination of strenuous scholarly rigour, and uncompromising analysis, replete with a full and clear awareness of what interdisciplinarity involves. A welcome new voice offering unique insights into texts that we thought we knew. Canning's book opens new and exciting avenues for literary and stylistic investigation, while making an important contribution to the study of English Renaissance. Elegantly combining cognitive poetics focus with more traditional historically situated analysis yields a multi-faceted scholarly perspective from which scholars of many orientations can learn. The work is a model example of how the gap between linguistics and literature can be bridged for the benefit of both disciplines. Patricia Canning provides a reading of Macbeth informed by contemporary stylistics in [the chapter entitled] "A Deed Without A Name" . . . Canning patiently explains her approach as it progresses, and her methodology will be of special interest to those working in stylistics. * The Year's Work in English Studies *