The International Christopher Marlowe

This project, supervised by Dr. Edward Paleit, is funded by the AHRC Early Career Fellowship Scheme.

Project facilitator

Nora Williams

Overview

The International Christopher Marlowe project explores the links between Marlowe's plays, poems and translations and the English reception of European political thought between 1572 (the year of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre) and 1593, the year of Marlowe's death.

The project will investigate how texts, theories and ideas emanating overseas (and especially in France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain) were circulated in England during the period - for example through translation, republication, or transmission within particular communities, as well as through their traceable influence on contemporary English writers and thinkers. Asking how Marlowe's works can be linked to such material, it also considers the implications for our understanding of 'native' literary and political culture in the late sixteenth century. Finally it tries to describe in a theoretical as well as historical way the relationship between a body of material known as 'political thought' and imaginative literature.

The project includes a conference on the theme of the 'International Marlowe', which will take place in late 2015, and a series of drama workshops developed for local Devon schools exploring political ideas in Marlovian drama. A project website, currently under development, explains the project in greater detail.