Creatively Expanding the Premodern: Historical and Literary Afterlives

This book highlights the stories of women from premodern history and literature through models of adaptations, retellings, and criticism such as poems, plays, and essays. Reviving these voices from the background widens the appeal and accessibility of scholarship in the humanities. Creative composing processes draw research through the imagination and experience of the writer. This act can help explore qualities of historical events and literary figures that are still relevant today. The four authors of this book demonstrate these approaches through creative adaptations and responses to Biblical and Classical writings, Greek mythological figures, medieval narratives, powerful historical women, plays by Shakespeare, and works by other early modern English writers. What distinguishes this book from other scholarship on the premodern is its collaborative and interdisciplinary foundation, as well as its emphasis on literary and hybrid genres. Offering interdisciplinary ways of reading, thinking about, and reconceiving literature and scholarship in a way that invites dialogue and further creative responses, this volume provides humanities teachers with effective pedagogical tools to inspire deeper engagement and understanding in their students.