Early Modern Bonds of Trust and Risk

Joseph Sterrett, Associate Professor of English Literature, Aarhus University, Denmark. Alison Findlay, Professor of Renaissance Drama, Lancaster University, UK. Helen Wilcox, Professor Emerita of English Literature, Bangor University, Wales, UK.

1. Introduction by Joseph Sterrett (Aarhus University, Denmark), Alison Findlay (Lancaster University, UK), and Helen Wilcox (Bangor University, UK)

Part I: Personal trust and its risks in early modern texts

2. ‘“I lie with her and she with me”: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Pleasures of Distrust’
Michael Durrant (Bangor University, UK)

3. ‘“Loe, though he slay me, yet will I trust in him”: tenuous trust and risk in Donne and Herbert’
Joseph Sterrett (Aarhus University, Denmark)

4. ‘Trust, risk and vulnerability in Paradise Lost’
Rachel Willie (Liverpool John Moores University, UK)

Part II: Early modern communal trust

5. ‘Trust and Risk in The Merry Wives of Windsor’
Alison Findlay (Lancaster University, UK)

6. ‘A “Breathing Flight” of Faith: Communities of Trust in Robert Southwell’s Poetry’
Chloe Kathleen Preedy (University of Exeter, UK)

7. ‘On the Line: religious controversy and trust in early modern English literature’
Helen Wilcox (Bangor University, UK)

8. ‘“This I make my testmt”: trust and risk in the wills of three early modern women’
Vicki Kay Price (Bangor University)

Part III: Credit and risk in early modern institutions

9. ‘Trust and Risk in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice’
Line Cotegnies (Sorbonne University, France)

10. ‘“Honour is an essence that’s not seen”: female reputation and trust in Much Ado About Nothing and Othello’
Emma Kaersgaard (Aarhus University, Denmark)

11. ‘Taking Note and the Technologies of Trust in Volpone’
Angus Vine (University of Stirling, UK)

12. ‘Trust, Risk, and Credit in The Winter’s Tale’
Rita Banerjee (University of Calcutta, India)

13. ‘“Intrigue, artifice, and trick… with a face of honesty”: Corporations and Reputations’
Liam Haydon (Natural Environment Research Council)

14. Epilogue: ‘Romance and the Spirit of Trust: Narratives of Forswearing in Chrétien, Shakespeare and Mozart’
Laura Hatch (Brigham Young University, USA) and Julia Reinhard Lupton (The University of California, Irvine, USA)