The research interests and expertise of the Early Modern Group are lively and diverse. They range from work on early 16th century Scottish and English court culture to late 17th-century religious polemic, visual culture and book history, and from Jacobean court masques to Shakespeare's role in contemporary popular culture. Members of the group share a particular interest in questions of adaptation and appropriation, including both the translation and reception of the classics in early modern England and the appropriation of early modern texts in later periods. The Department is home to Bunyan Studies, the journal of the International John Bunyan Society.
Current research by members of the group includes a special issue of the journal Shakespeare on Shakespeare and the First World War (Smialkowska), scholarly editions of Plutarch's Lives and Essays for the MHRA Tudor & Stuart Translations series (Schurink), edited collections such as Shakespearean Echoes (Hansen) and an Arden Renaissance Drama Guide to John Webster's The White Devil (Hansen and Frazer).
Case Study: Books and pop music: challenging conventions that define high and low culture
