Books by Patrick (Pennsylvania State University) Cheney

Studying the sublime in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century writing, this book advances our understanding of Renaissance literature as a field in the arts and humanities today. Above all, the chapters feature a model of creative excellence and social liberty that explains the greatness of the English literary Renaissance.

Analysing Shakespeare's full professional career, his poetry and plays, within a nationalist setting, Cheney views him not simply as a man of the theatre but also as an author with a literary career. This book includes a detailed discussion of Shakespeare's literary relations with his contemporary authors Spenser and Marlowe.

This important book reassesses Shakespeare as a poet and dramatist. Patrick Cheney contests critical preoccupation with Shakespeare as 'a man of the theatre' by recovering his original standing as an early modern author: he is a working dramatist who composes some of the most extraordinary poems in English.