Renaissance/early modern research guide

This guide has been designed as a starting point for research involving the Renaissance and Early Modern time period.

If you need help, please contact Ivana Niseteo, Liaison Librarian for English, French, French Programs (FASS), Global Humanities, Linguistics, and World Languages & Literatures at 778.782.6838 or iniseteo@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.

A useful starting point is the book Literary research and the British Renaissance and early modern period : strategies and sources.

Reference sources

Encyclopedias and companions

  • Key concepts in Renaissance literature [print]
  • Encyclopedia of Renaissance literature [print]
  • A new companion to English Renaissance literature and culture [print]
  • The Oxford handbook of Tudor literature, 1485-1603 [print]
  • A companion to Renaissance drama [print]
  • The Blackwell companion to the Bible and English literature [print]
  • A companion to Shakespeare [print]
  • The new Cambridge companion to Shakespeare [print]
  • The Cambridge companion to Spenser [print]
  • Dictionary of literary and dramatic censorship in Tudor and Stuart England [print]
  • Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: A Students' Guide [print or online
Search for more by including the words encyclopedia OR dictionary OR handbook OR companion OR manual in your KEYWORD search (e.g. Marlowe AND companion)

Dictionaries and literary terms

  • Oxford English Dictionary. Covers words from across the English speaking world. It also gives etymological analysis, variant spellings, and pronunciation using IPA.
  • The Oxford dictionary of literary terms. The Penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory [print]
  • The Bedford glossary of critical and literary terms [print]. A glossary of contemporary literary theory [print]
  • Shakespeare's language : a glossary of unfamiliar words in Shakespeare's plays and poems [print].
  • Shakespeare's bawdy. Dictionary of literary-rhetorical conventions of the English Renaissance [print]
  • Classical myths and legends in the Middle Ages and Renaissance : a dictionary of allegorical meanings [print]

Chronologies

  • A Milton chronology [print]
  • A Sidney chronology, 1554-1654 [print]
  • A Christopher Marlowe chronology [print]
 
Many of the companion handbooks also include a Chronology section; check the catalogue record of each companion to confirm the inclusion of a chronology/timeline section.

 

Quotations

Literary criticism

  • MLA International Bibliography. Contains scholarly articles on English literature, linguistics, language and folklore.
  • Literature Online. A searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, full-text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference resources.
  • Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Index to Medieval and Renaissance journals and books.
  • Shakespeare Survey Online. All issues of the Shakespeare Survey, a yearly publication since 1948 which publishes the best of international Shakespeare scholarship.
  • World Shakespeare Bibliography. Annotated entries for all important books, articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare and published or produced between 1964 and early 2005.
  • Oxford Bibliographies Online. Online index to bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation with a bibliographical essay on sources.
  • Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser World Bibliography. Online annotated bibliography of material by and about Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser.
  • Literature Criticism Online. Full text access to six major Gale literary criticism series, covering literature from 1400 to the present.
  • Project MUSE Search. Full text access to the back files of Humanities and Social Science Journals; Good English Literature content.
  • JSTOR. Full text access to the back files of Humanities and Social Science Journals; Good English Literature content. Note content in JSTOR is 3-5 years old.

Primary sources

  • Early English Books Online (EEBO). A library of over 100,000 individual titles from 1473-1700. Online digital images are available for every page.
  • State Papers Online. A resource for the study of Early Modern Britain and Europe. It reproduces original historical manuscripts in facsimile, linking each manuscript to its corresponding fully-searchable Calendar entry. Available parts include: Part I: The Tudors, 1509-1603: Domestic and Part II: The Tudors, 1509-1603: Foreign
  • British Literary Manuscripts. Scans of letters and diaries, poems, plays, novels, religious writings, and similar materials from 1100-1900.
  • Digital Scriptorium. Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts [Columbia University]
  • Map of Early Modern London. Maps the streets, sites, and significant boundaries of late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century London (1560-1640). The project links encyclopedia-style articles, scholarly work, student work, editions, and literary texts to the places mentioned therein [University of Victoria].
  • Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads. Digitized copies of the sheets and ballads in several major collections. The original printed materials range from the 16th to the 20th century.
  • English Broadside Ballad Archive. Website dedicated to early ballads in English, especially 17th-century broadside ballads; provides full transcriptions and images of the originals, search facilities, sung versions of ballads, and background essays [Early Modern Center, University of California-Santa Barbara].
  • The Shakespeare Quartos Archive. A digital collection of pre-1642 editions of William Shakespeare's plays.
  • Treasures in Full: Shakespeare in Quarto. Copies of the 107 plays by Shakespeare printed in quarto before the 1642 theatre closures [British Library].
  • Internet Shakespeare Editions. Shakespeare-related resources, including fully annotated texts of his plays and poems, exciting multimedia materials and records of his plays in performance, and thousands of searchable pages devoted to the history, arts, politics, society, and stage of Shakespeare's world, as well as biographical details of his life [University of Victoria]

Images & film

  • Historical dictionary of Renaissance art [print]
  • ARTstor. A repository of over one million digital images and related data.
  • Oxford Art Online. Reference resources on all aspects of visual arts. Sources include Grove Art Online, Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics & Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms.
  • British Printed Images to 1700. A digital library of prints and book illustrations from early modern Britain. It offers various resources aimed at furthering our knowledge and understanding of them.
  • The National Portrait Gallery. Over 160,000 portraits from the 16th Century to the present day.
  • Folger Digital Image Collection. Offers online access to over 40,000 images from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection, including books, theatre memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and more.
  • Films on Demand. Licensed for non-theatrical public performance on campus at Simon Fraser University.
 
For sound recordings and performances available on video/DVD at the library, search the SFU Catalogue for the title of the work, and limit to the appropriate material type using the drop down menu to the right of the search box.

Related topics

History

  • Handbook of European history, 1400-1600 : late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation [print]
  • Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance [print or online]
  • Encyclopedia of the Renaissance [print]
  • The Renaissance : a sourcebook [print]
  • Routledge encyclopedia of Tudor England [print]
  • The Routledge companion to the Tudor age [print]
  • English historical facts, 1485-1603 [print]
  • Historical dictionary of Tudor England, 1485-1603 [print]
  • A survey of London by John Stow [print or online]
  • Bibliography of British & Irish History. An authoritative guide to what has been written from the Roman period to the present day.
  • Historical Abstracts. Indexes journal articles, book reviews, dissertations on the history of the world outside of Canada & the United States.
  • British History Online. Contains some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.

Religion

  • The Oxford encyclopedia of the Reformation [online]
  • The age of Reformation : the Tudor and Stewart realms, 1485-1603 [print]
  • Renaissance and Reformation, 1500-1620 : a biographical dictionary [print or online]
  • Bible in English. A collection of 20 different versions of the English Bible from the tenth to the twentieth century, including 12 full Bibles, 5 New Testament texts, 2 versions of the Gospels only, and William Tyndale's translations of the Pentateuch, Jonah and the New Testament.
  • The Book of Common Prayer - 1559. Online version of the 1559 edition of the Book of Common Prayer.  Includes background information and links to other resources.
  • Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts. More than 1,200 works from the Reformation and post-Reformation eras, including the theological writings of more than 300 Protestant authors, as well as confessional documents, biblical commentaries, polemical treatises, and Bible translations.
  • Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation. Includes over 450,000 pages of primary-source material from the 16th and 17th Centuries, including all the key catechisms, scholarly treatises, papal documents, devotional works, and theological volumes that sparked and sustained the reform from within the Catholic Church.
  • ATLA Religion Database. Indexes journal articles on all aspects of religion and theology, including church and religious history.

Theatre

  • English professional theatre, 1530-1660 [print]
  • English Renaissance theatre history : a reference guide [print]
  • The English stage : a history of drama and performance [print]
  • The Shakespearean stage 1574-1642 [print]
  • The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642 [print]
  • Playgoing in Shakespeare's London [print]
  • The Shakespearian playing companies [print or online]
  • Staging in Shakespeare's theatres [print]
  • The Elizabethan stage [print]
  • Annals of English drama, 975-1700 [print]
  • Database of Early English Playbooks (DEEP). Contains early modern plays and playwrights with additional information, such as genre, dates of first publication and production.
  • Records of Early English Drama (REED): Patrons & Performances. A wide range of data about professional performers on tour in the provinces – their patrons, the performance venues they used and the routes they took across the kingdom.
  • Shakespeare's Globe. An international online resource dedicated to further the understanding of Shakespeare in performance.

Additional sources