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Professor Catherine Bates

Catherine Bates

Catherine Bates is Research Professor at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance. She works on English literature and culture of the sixteenth century, with particular emphasis on poetry, poetics, and courtly forms, including lyric, epic, and romance. She was awarded the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 2015, the Elizabeth Dietz Prize in 2019, and the Julius Silberger Award in 2023. She has held a Solmsen Research Fellowship at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2014/15), and a Mellon Fellowship at the Huntington Library, California (2017/18), as well as Visiting Research Fellowships at Churchill College, Cambridge (2015/16), the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto (2016/17), the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study in the University of London (2018-2020), and the Senate House Library, University of London (summer 2019). She is an elected Fellow of the English Association (2024-). Catherine welcomes applications from prospective PhD students interested in working on any aspect of sixteenth-century British literature.

Email: c.t.bates@warwick.ac.uk

Publications

MONOGRAPHS

- On Not Defending Poetry: Defence and Indefensibility in Sidney’s Defence of Poesy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Pp.xviii + 299

Winner of the Elizabeth Dietz Prize 2019

(reviewed in TLS, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Review of English Studies, Spenser Review, etc.)

- Masculinity and the Hunt: Wyatt to Spenser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; paperback 2016). Pp.viii + 347.

Winner of the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize 2015

(reviewed in Review of English Studies, TLS, Renaissance Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies, etc.)

- Masculinity, Gender and Identity in the English Renaissance Lyric (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007; paperback 2010). Pp.viii + 263

(reviewed in Notes & Queries, Renaissance and Reformation, Renaissance Quarterly, Studies in English Literature 1500-1800, etc.)

- Play in a Godless World: The Theory and Practice of Play in Shakespeare, Nietzsche and Freud (London: Open Gate Press, 1999). Pp.vii + 256.

(reviewed in Journal of American Academy of Psychoanalysis, Notes & Queries, Shakespeare Survey, TLS, etc.).

- The Rhetoric of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, re-issued 1995; paperback 2006). Pp.xi + 236.

(reviewed in Journal of British Studies, Notes & Queries, Renaissance Quarterly, Review of English Studies, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Sidney Newsletter, TLS, etc.).

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EDITED VOLUMES

- A Companion to Renaissance Literature, ed. Catherine Bates (London and New York: Routledge), 52 essays, 420,000 words, under contract.

- The Oxford Handbook of Philip Sidney (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 50 essays, 366,000 words, in production.

- Sixteenth-Century British Poetry, ed. Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney; volume 4 of The Oxford History of Poetry in English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). Pp.xxiii + 656.

- A Companion to Renaissance Poetry (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2018). Pp.xx + 653.

- The Cambridge Companion to The Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Pp.xiv + 279.

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EDITED TEXTS

Literary Criticism of the English Renaissance, ed., Catherine Bates (PI of the project), Gavin Alexander, Vladimir Brljak, Sarah Knight, and Micha Lazarus (Oxford: Oxford University Press): a major edition of primary texts on English literary criticism, literary theory, and poetics, 1475-1675; 4 volumes, 2 million words; contracted.

- Sir Philip Sidney: Selected Poems, ed. Catherine Bates (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994). Pp.xxiv + 219.

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ARTICLES

- "The Symbolic and the Imaginary in Shakespeare’sVenus and Adonis", 16,500 words, American Imago, 81.4 (2024), forthcoming.

Winner of the 2023 Julius Silberger Award for interdisciplinary work in psychoanalysis by the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

- '"Knights of the same order": a reference in Sidney’s Defence of Poesy explained', Notes and Queries, 68.1 (2021): 65–70.

- “Obtaining Grace: Poetic Language and the Language of Reform in Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella”, Reformation, 26.1 (2021), 23–41.

- “George Turberville and the painful art of falconry”, English Literary Renaissance, 41.3 (2011): 403–28.

- “Astrophil and the manic wit of the abject male”, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 41.1 (2001): 1–24.

- “The Point of Puns”, Modern Philology, 96.4 (1999): 421–38.

- “Castrating The Castration Complex”, Textual Practice, 12.1 (1998): 101–119.

- “No Sin But Irony: Kierkegaard and Milton’s Satan”, Literature and Theology, 11.1 (1997): 1–26.

- “Weaving and Writing in Othello”, Shakespeare Survey, 46 (1993): 51-60.

- “‘A mild admonisher’: Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sixteenth-Century Satire”, Huntington Library Quarterly, 56.3 (1993): 243-58.

- “Much Ado About Nothing: The Contents of Jonson’s Forest”, Essays in Criticism, 42.1 (1992): 24–35.

- “Pope’s Influence on Shakespeare?”, Shakespeare Quarterly, 42.1 (1991): 57–59.

- “‘A large occasion of discourse’: John Lyly and the art of civil conversation”, Review of English Studies, 42.168 (1991): 469–86, reproduced in the Ashgate University Wits series: John Lyly, ed. Ruth Lunney (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 31–48.

- “The Politics of Spenser’s Amoretti”, Criticism, 33.1 (1991): 73–89.

- “‘Of Court it seemes’: a semantic analysis of courtship and to court”, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 20.1 (1990): 21–57.

- “Images of Government inThe Faerie Queene, Book II”, Notes and Queries, 36.3 (1989): 314–15.

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BOOK CHAPTERS

– ‘The structure and organization of Salve Deus Rex Iudaeorum’, in Kimberly Johnson and Brice Peterson, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Aemilia Lanyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 5,700 words; contracted.

– ‘Introduction’, in The Routledge Companion to Renaissance Literature, ed. Catherine Bates (London and New York: Routledge), 5,000 words, contracted; in progress.

– ‘Philip Sidney’s Poetry’, in The Routledge Companion to Renaissance Literature, ed. Catherine Bates (London and New York: Routledge), 8,000 words, contracted; in progress.

– ‘Wit’, in The Routledge Companion to Renaissance Literature, ed. Catherine Bates (London and New York: Routledge), 8,000 words; contracted; submitted.

– ‘England: Spenser, Sidney, Chapman, Donne, Lucy Hutchinson’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Sublime, ed. Emily Brady, Patrick Cheney, and Philip Hardie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), 8,000 words.

– ‘The Symbolic and the Imaginary in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis’, reproduced in New Developments in Psychoanalytic Shakespeare Criticism, ed. Catherine Bates and James W. Stone, 16,500 words, submitted; volume in progress.

‘Poetic Language and Poetic Form in the Sonnets of Philip Sidney’, in MLA Approaches to Teaching the Sonnet, ed. Joshua Reid (New York: MLA Publications), 8,000 words, submitted.

– ‘Introduction’, in The Oxford Handbook of Philip Sidney, ed. Catherine Bates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), 12,000 words; in production.

– ‘Astrophil and Stella’, in The Oxford Handbook of Philip Sidney, ed. Catherine Bates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), 13,600 words; in production.

– ‘Drama’, in The Oxford Handbook of Philip Sidney, ed. Catherine Bates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), 8,000 words; in production.

– ‘“Wild for to hold though I seem tame”: the paradox of the phallic female in falconry imagery’, in Hunting Troubles: Gender and Its Intersections in the Cultural History of the Hunt, ed. Laura Beck and Maurice Sass (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), 5,500 words; in production.

– 'Hunting / prey', in Shakespeare / Nature: Contemporary Readings in the Human and Non-human, ed. Charlotte Scott (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), pp.227-46.

– 'Englishing the Sonnet', in Routledge Resources Online: The Renaissance World, ed. Kristen Poole (London: Taylor and Francis, 2023), DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367347093-RERW121-1.

– 'Introduction', with Patrick Cheney, in Sixteenth–Century British Poetry, ed. Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney; volume 4 of The Oxford History of Poetry in English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp.1–15.

– 'Lyric', with Joseph Campana, in Sixteenth–Century British Poetry, ed. Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney; volume 4 of The Oxford History of Poetry in English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp.191–210.

– 'Philip Sidney', in Sixteenth–Century British Poetry, ed. Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney; volume 4 of The Oxford History of Poetry in English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp.439–55.

- 'Recognitions: Shakespeare, Freud, and the story of psychoanalysis', in The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis, ed. Vera Camden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp.41–53. This volume is winner of the 2024 Book Prize awarded by the American Psychoanalytic Association to the book that best promotes the integration of the academic and clinical worlds of psychoanalysis.

- 'Abject Authorship: A Portrait of the Artist in Ovid and his Renaissance Imitators', in Ovid and Masculinity in the Renaissance, ed. John S. Garrison and Goran Stanivukovic (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2020), pp.48–67.

- 'The English sonnet: cycles and recycling', in Gathering Force: Early Modern British Literature in Transition, 1557-1623, ed. Lauren Shohet and Kristen Poole, vol. 1 of Early Modern British Literature in Transition, 3 vols., gen. ed. Stephen B. Dobranski, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp.19–32.

- 'Sexuality', in John Donne in Context, ed. Michael Schoenfeldt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp.177–84.

- 'Shakespeare and the Female Voice in Soliloquy', in Shakespeare and the Soliloquy in Early Modern English Drama, ed. Tony Cousins and Daniel Derrin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp.56–67, 232–34.

- 'Synecdochic Structures in the Sonnet Sequences of Sidney and Spenser', in A Companion to Renaissance Poetry, ed. Catherine Bates (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2018), pp.276–88.

- 'Pamela’s Purse: The Price of Romance in Sidney’s Arcadia', in Timely Voices: Romance Writing in English Literature, ed. Goran Stanivukovic (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2017), pp.281–98.

- 'Gender', in A Handbook of English Renaissance Studies, ed, John Lee (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), pp.15–28.

- '"Profit and pleasure": the real economy of Tottel’s Songs and Sonnets', in Tottel's Miscellany and Its Early Modern Contexts, ed. Stephen Hamrick (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp.35–62.

- 'Wit', in The New Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Stephen Cushman, Roland Greene, et al (Princeton: Princeton University Press, new edition, 2012), pp.1539–40.

- 'The Poems', in The Oxford Handbook to Shakespeare, ed. Arthur F. Kinney, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011; paperback 2013), pp.334–51.

- 'Desire, discontent, parody: the love sonnet in early modern England', in The Cambridge Companion to the Sonnet, ed. A. D. Cousins and Peter Howarth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp.105–24.

- 'The Faerie Queene: Britain’s national monument', in The Cambridge Companion to The Epic, ed. Catherine Bates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp.133–45.

- 'The Enigma of A Lover’s Complaint', in The Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. Michael C. Schoenfeldt (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp.426–40.

- 'Wyatt, Surrey, and the Henrician court', in Early Modern English Poetry: A Critical Companion, ed. Patrick Cheney, Andrew Hadfield, and Garrett Sullivan Jr. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp.38–47.

- 'Shakespeare’s Tragedies of Love', in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. Claire McEachern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; revised ed., 2013), pp.195–217.

- 'Literature and the Court', in The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature, ed. David Loewenstein and Janel Mueller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; paperback 2006), pp.343–73.

- 'Love and Courtship', in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy, ed. Alexander Leggatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp.102–22.

- Introduction to Iris Murdoch, The Nice and The Good (London: Vintage, 2000), pp.vii–xvi.

- 'Poetry, Patronage, and the Court', in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500-1600, ed. Arthur Kinney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.90–103.

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REVIEWS

- Nadine Akkerman, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), reviewed for Renaissance Quarterly.

- Gary Waller, The Female Baroque in Early Modern English Literary Culture: From Mary Sidney to Aphra Behn (Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2020), reviewed for Renaissance Quarterly, 75.1 (2022): 358–60.

- Rocio G. Sumillera, Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics (Oxford: Legenda, 2019), reviewed for Modern Language Review, 117.2 (2022): 278–79.

- Richard James Wood, Sidney’s Arcadia and the Conflicts of Virtue (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), reviewed for the Journal of British Studies, 61.1 (2022): 225–26.

- Fulke Greville and the Culture of the English Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), ed. Russ Leo, Katrin Röder, and Freya Sierhuis, reviewed for Spenser Review, 49.3.7 (2019), unpaginated.

- “Recent Studies in the Renaissance”, reviewed for Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 59.1 (2019): 203-41 (annual omnibus review, over 100 volumes).

- Colin McEleney, Futile Pleasures: Early Modern Literature and the Limits of Utility (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), reviewed for Renaissance Quarterly, 71.1 (2018): 431–32.

- Danila Sokolov, Renaissance Texts, Medieval Subjectivities: Rethinking Petrarchan Desire from Wyatt to Shakespeare (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2017), reviewed for The Spenser Review 47.3.49 (2017), unpaginated.

- Jason Powell, ed., The Complete Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, vol. 1: Prose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), reviewed for Renaissance Quarterly, 70.2 (2017): 805–806.

- Heather Dubrow, Deixis in the Early Modern English Lyric: Unsettling Spatial Anchors Like 'Here,' 'This,' 'Come' (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), reviewed for Renaissance Quarterly, 70.1 (2017): 402–404.

- Ian Moulton, Love in Print in the Sixteenth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) reviewed for The Spenser Review, 45.3.10 (2016), unpaginated.

- Julie Crawford, Mediatrix: Women, Politics, and Literary Production in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), reviewed for Renaissance Quarterly, 68.3 (2015): 1131–32.

- Elizabeth Heale, ed., The Devonshire Manuscript: A Women's Book of Courtly Poetry (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), reviewed for Modern Language Review, 110.3 (2015): 819-20.

- Christopher Marlow, Performing Masculinity in English University Drama, 1598-1636 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), reviewed for Renaissance Studies Journal, (2014), unpaginated.

- Mike Pincombe and Cathy Shrank, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature, 1485-1603, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 61.1 (2014): 159–62.

- John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics (New York: Gotham Press, 2011), reviewed for CLIO: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History, 42.3 (2013): 409-14.

- Joseph Campana, The Pain of Reformation: Spenser, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Masculinity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), reviewed for Renaissance Quarterly, 65.4 (2012): 1345–46.

- Jane Kingsley-Smith, Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), reviewed for Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 249.2 (2012):359-61.

- Jennifer Richardson and Alison Thorne, eds., Rhetoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 2007); Jennifer Richards, Rhetoric (London: Routledge, 2008); and Christine Mason Sutherland, The Eloquence of Mary Astell (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005), reviewed for Rhetorica, 28.2 (2010): 232–35.

- Jennifer C. Vaught, Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 57.1 (2010): 131–33.

- Gillian Austen, George Gascoigne (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), reviewed for Review of English Studies, 60.246 (2009): 642–44.

- Hester Lees-Jeffries, England’s Helicon: Fountains in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), reviewed for Review of English Studies, 59.242 (2008): 770–72.

- Jennifer Panek, Widows and Suitors in Early Modern English Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), reviewed for University of Toronto Quarterly, 75 (2005-6): 247-48.

- Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, eds., The Myth of Elizabeth (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 51.2 (2004): 194–96.

- John Watkins, Representing Elizabeth in Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 50.4 (2003): 473–74.

- Brian Howell, The Dance of Geometry (London: The Toby Press, 2002), reviewed for Leviathan Quarterly, 7 (2003): 32-35.

- A. B. Taylor, ed., Shakespeare’s Ovid: The Metamorphoses in the Plays and Poems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Kenneth Borris, Allegory and Epic in English Renaissance Literature: Heroic Form in Sidney, Spenser, and Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), reviewed for Theatre Research International, 28 (2003).

- “Missing the men”, review of RSC production of Twelfth Night, for TLS, 8th June 2001.

- “Commodity’s slaves”, review of two productions of King John, for TLS, 13th April 2001.

- “Strife in the mind”, review of The Tempest at Almeida Theatre, for TLS, 12th January 2001, reprinted in Shakespearean Criticism, 72 (2002), unpaginated.

- Helen Hackett, Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), reviewed for Renaissance Journal, 1.3 (2001), unpaginated.

- “The narrator loses his spin”, review of RSC production of Henry V, for TLS, 14th September 2000.

- “La Lupa”, review of Giovanni Verga’s La Lupa, for TLS, 21 July 2000.

- “Anger, Oh Yes!”, review of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending, for TLS, 6th July 2000.

- “Life at arm’s length”, review of RSC production of Chekhov’s The Seagull, for TLS, 11th February 2000.

- “The soup, the fish and the gravy”, review of RSC production of Carlo Goldoni’s A Servant to Two Masters, for TLS, 7th January 2000.

- “Cleaning up Caliban”, omnibus Shakespeare review, for TLS, 19th November 1999.

- “Right-on Renaissance Woman”, review of Alison Findlay, A Feminist Perspective on Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), for TLS, 9th July 1999.

- Alexander Leggatt, English Stage Comedy: 1490–1990 (London: Routledge, 1998), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 46.4 (1999): 52627.

- Ilona Bell, Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 46.4 (1999): 52425.

- Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, eds., Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Introduction (New York: Polity Press, 1998), reviewed for TLS, 24 April 1998.

- Kelly Oliver, ed., The Portable Kristeva (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), reviewed for TLS, 20 February 1998.

- “How soon he is bewitched”, review of Viviana Comensoli, “Household Business”: Domestic plays of early modern England, for TLS, 28 January 1998.

- “Shut in a ladyes casket”, review of Thomas Lodge, Rosalind, ed. D. Beecher, and ed. Brian Nellist (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions), for TLS, 24 October 1997.

- C. J. Summers and Larry Pebworth, eds., Renaissance Discourses of Desire (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1993), and J. G. Turner, ed., Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 41.4 (1994): 548–49.

- A. D. Hall, Ceremony and Civility in English Renaissance Prose (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1991), reviewed for Review of English Studies, 45.179 (1994): 413–14.

- “Putting the Serious into the Trivial”, review of Gerald Hammond, Fleeting Things: English Poets and Poetry, 1616–1600 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), for Essays in Criticism, 41.1 (1991): 62–67.

- Philippa Berry, Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen (London: Routledge, 1991), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 38.2 (1991): 216–17.

- Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 38.2 (1991): 224–25.

- Alan Young, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments (London: George Philips, 1987), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 35.4 (1988): 524–25.

- Carey McIntosh, Common and Courtly Language: The Stylistics of Social Class in Eighteenth-Century English Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), reviewed for Notes and Queries, 34.4 (1987): 543–44.