Vol. 8 No. 1 (2022)

This edition of Early Modern Culture Online, the first part of issue number eight, presents three articles whose concerns range from the religious and the spiritual to the semi-religious matter of literary canonisation. Opening the issue, Roy Eriksen’s “Marlowe and Prayer” (pp. 1-21) argues that elements of Christopher Marlowe’s style originate in prayer – a much contested but somewhat overlooked religious-poetic sub-genre. Marlowe appears in the next article, too, Charles Moseley’s survey of the literary canon such as it appeared in the time of Shakespeare. Not only was there a Classical canon, he argues in “Shakespeare’s Canon” (pp. 23-37), but an English one to which Marlowe, among others, belonged. Finally, Kent Cartwright delves into the mysterious and strange sides of Shakespearean comedy, his “Twinship and Occult References in Twelfth Night” (pp. 39-58) uncovering how the dénouements of Shakespeare’s comedies are not as settled as it is often assumed; occult and uncanny elements linger on, even after their ostensibly happy endings.

This EMCO also marks an ending. Roy Eriksen, one of EMCO’s founding editors, was working on revisions for the article included in this issue when he passed away in April 2019. The text has been lightly revised in cooperation with one of its reviewers and is included here in memoriam.