In a series of ten historical and literary studies, this volume analyses the complex narrative of changing political identities in early modern Europe and maps out some of the dominant ways in which 'European-ness' was articulated in documents of the period. As the collection unfolds, its contributors explore these themes from a whole range of geographical perspectives, including not only accounts of British culture, but also those describing cultural relations and political identities with regard to Italy, Spain, France, the Papacy, the Netherlands, Bohemia and the Americas, for example. Concentrating upon early modern nations at a time when they were just beginning to formulate recognizable collective identities, the studies contained in this volume offer a clear picture of the ways in which current literary and historical scholarship may yield penetrating insights into the broader question of how the very idea of Europe evolved amongst its native inhabitants during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Editor: Andrew Hiscock is Reader in English at the University of Wales Bangor. He has published widely on early modern literature, particularly English and French drama in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His most recent monograph is The Uses of this World: Thinking Space in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Cary and Jonson and he is at present researching into literary discourses of memory in evidence during the period 1520-1620.