This article draws upon recent research that has prioritised 'space' as an exclusive concern in the study of Renaissance literature and culture, but offers a particular emphasis on elite space in the period, thus exploring the definitional problems surrounding the court as a social and spatial concept, both in Marlowe's Edward II and the early modern period. The Renaissance court was a problematic space, often escaping exact description in literary and non-literary production. Contemporary descriptions include the idea of the court as the place where the monarch resides, the place of justice and as a fixed physical setting. These may be seen as 'court models' that were available for appropriation by various groups, though Edward II appears to highlight the uncertainty of various attempts at categorisation.
This article surveys recent critical approaches to the life, and particularly the writing, of Philip Sidney during the last three years. As such, the piece reviews the work of a variety of familiar and less familiar critics, whose work spans a multitude of critical positions and schools of thought. Taken together as a whole, modern work on Sidney appears to be rich and, occasionally, groundbreaking, with many critics approaching Sidney's texts with fresh perspectives that sometimes challenge supposed orthodoxies in former studies. Consequently, topics covered here include updated psychoanalytic approaches to the sonnet sequence, feminism and allegory in the Arcadia, intellectual and religious influences on Sidney's life and works, and a particularly interesting utilization of aspects of Elizabethan law in Tudor writing.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.