Book excerpt: Reading the Renaissance, first published in 1996, is a collection of essays discussing the literature, drama, poetics and culture of the Renaissance period. The Renaissance, which extends from about 1300 to 1700 depending on the country, was originally a rebirth of the arts but has also come to apply to the wider cultural change in the face of modernization. The essays represent a plural Renaissance and explore the boundaries between genre and gender, languages and literatures, reading and criticism, the Renaissance and the medieval, the early modern and the postmodern, world and theatre. There is also a plurality of methods that is fitting for the variety of topics and the richness of the Renaissance. This book is ideal for students of literature and theatre studies.