Textus. English Studies in Italy

TEXTUS. ENGLISH STUDIES IN ITALY n. 3 (2023) – Literature Issue

Christopher Marlowe: Texts, Contexts, Meanings

Member Editor: Dr Cristiano Ragni (University of Verona)
International Guest Editor: Dr Andrew Duxfield (University of Liverpool)
Copy Editor: Dr Michael Davies (University of Liverpool)

Deadline for abstracts: 20 December 2022
Acceptance of abstracts to be notified by 20 January 2023
Deadline for articles: 20 February 2023

Please submit your abstract of around 500 words to:
cristiano.ragni@univr.it; A.Duxfield@liverpool.ac.uk

When the Romantics re-discovered Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) after two centuries of oblivion, they gave
new life to a dramatic and poetic output that had enjoyed much success during the writer’s lifetime: Dido, Queen of
Carthage (probably written with Thomas Nashe), Tamburlaine the Great, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward
II, and The Massacre at Paris, but also the first English translations of Ovid’s Amores and Lucan’s Bellum Civile, the
epyllion Hero and Leander, and the poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”. At the same time, the Romantics
also presented the rumours that Marlowe the successful playwright-poet-translator had been a spy, an atheist, and
a sodomite in a different light. Considering themselves talented authors relegated to the margins of society
because of their extravagance by the hypocrisy of their contemporaries, the Romantics ended up celebrating
Marlowe as a subversive outcast and their own precursor. No wonder that it was precisely this “mythic reputation”
that has fascinated modernity the most, and somehow continues to thrive in popular culture, together with the
‘conspiracy theories’ according to which Marlowe was the secret hand behind Shakespeare’s works.
With its reappraisal of the multifaceted “Marlovian landscape”, recent scholarship has moved away from the
“mythologies” surrounding Marlowe. From the contributions on the significance of the poetic revolution he
inaugurated to the learned insights into his continental and classical influences or his engagement with the other
Elizabethan poets and playwrights, as well as the social and political issues that frame him as writer, contemporary
scholarship has proved to be more and more interested in factual clues, so as better to understand Marlowe’s rich
literary legacy.
Following in the footstep of such scholarship, the aim of this special issue is to focus on Marlowe’s texts, which
have often risked being sidelined in wider cultural and political debates, and the contexts that made it possible for
Marlowe to be(come) the playwright, poet, and translator that he was, so as to shed new light on the meanings of
his dramatic and poetic works. In light of these considerations, the present special issue intends to focus on these
macro areas of research:
– Marlowe’s works in the light of early modern textual and theatrical theories and practices;
– Marlowe’s works and their (possible) sources and/or intertexts;
– Marlowe’s works in relation to other literary, dramatic, and intellectual trends;
– Issues of authorship in Marlowe’s works;
– Marlowe and the other early modern poets and playwrights: collaboration and/or rivalry;
– The interconnectedness between Marlowe’s translations and plays;
– The reception/adaptation of Marlowe’s works in later English-speaking culture and literature;
– The reception/adaptation of Marlowe’s works in non-English speaking cultures.

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