Rituals of Mourning in Early Modern English Literature and/or Drama

Early modern studies have lately emphasised the significance of transformations in mourning rituals for understanding the literature of the period. Historians including Ralph Houlbrook, David Cressy and Peter Marshall have alerted scholars to the historical, religious, emotional and gendered significance of these rituals, while literary scholars including Stephen Greenblatt, Michael Neil, Thomas Rist, Patricia Phillippy and Katharine Goodland have in each of these ways shown how the revised historical understandings transform our appreciations of the contemporary literature. Applicants for this project will take forward the established insights of this significant new development in early modern studies. They will either extend the critical insights that have been achieved for an author to other works by the same author, so developing the picture of the author’s response to the contemporary, ritual transformations; or else they will apply the historical and literary insights of this developing trajectory in early modern studies to authors as yet to be discussed in these terms. Relevant authors for this project would include, but are not delimited to, Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, John Ford.

Candidates should apply for a PhD place in the normal way, stating:
o ‘Elphinstone PhD Scholarship’ in the Intended Source of Funding section
o The name of the lead supervisor in the Name of Proposed Supervisor section
o The title of the specific research project in the Outline Summary section