About the Book: On Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature: Essays
John Kerrigan is one of the foremost critics of English literature. This richly
informed collection brings together his essays on such major figures as Sir
Philip Sidney and Milton, but also less celebrated writers, including Thomas
Carew and-in a new piece-William Drummond, to reconfigure the familiar and help
extend the canon. Shakespeare looms large; his plays and poems and his influence
on Keats, are the subject of half the book. But themes and issues are pursued
from the 1580s to the late Restoration. Kerrigan acutely reassesses the nature
of early modern texts-their production and reconstruction by