Chapter submissions are invited for an edited collection, Marlowe X Theory.  

Marlowe is dead, and so is theory, right?  Maybe not.  Introducing her 1997 collection, Critical Essays on Christopher Marlowe, Emily C. Bartels observed: “To engage seriously with Marlowe…is (and was) also to question the ostensibly unquestionable mainstays of Western “civilization””.  Almost 30 years later, and with the imminent publication of The Oxford Marlowe, Marlowe X Theory will revisit and reconsider that claim, bringing together diverse readings of Marlowe’s work and versions of it in relation to classical, early modern, and modern or contemporary theoretical approaches, which themselves seek to question what seems unquestionable.  Marlowe X Theory will represent the diverse ways in which Marlowe and theory can hybridise, inform, enhance, conflict, and collaborate with each other.

We encourage abstracts for or submissions of 7,000-9,000-word chapters from emerging and established scholars in any geographical location, grounded in close analyses of both Marlowe’s works and theoretical models.  Contributions can explore or focus on the influence of ‘theory’, broadly defined, on Marlowe’s works (and stagings, adaptations, or appropriations of them), how theory can help us understand those works better, and how Marlowe’s works can help us understand theory better, too. 

Contributions might therefore discuss Marlowe in relation, but not limited, to:

• Classical political, aesthetic, rhetorical, and literary theory (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Horace, Cicero, Quintilian)
• Early modern aesthetic, rhetorical, and literary theory (e.g. Elyot, Harvey, Ascham, Wilson, Sidney, Puttenham, Gascoigne)
• Humanism and early modern political theory or theology (e.g. Erasmus, Bodin, Bacon, Montaigne, Calvin)
• Modern and contemporary aesthetic, dramatic, literary, and political theorists (e.g. Nietzsche, Gramsci, Brecht, Artaud, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Butler, Hall, Jameson, Kristeva, Spivak, Cixous, Haraway, Agamben, Bhabha, Sedgwick, Hardt and Negri, Halberstam)
• Marxist, Cultural Materialist, New Historicist, and Economic approaches
• Critical Race Theory, and Postcolonial/Decolonising approaches
• Feminism, Gender and Trans Studies, Queer Theory
• Posthumanism, and Ecocritical/Anthropocene Studies
• Disability Studies
• Trauma Theory
• Spatial Theory and Mobility Studies
• Psychoanalysis, and Cognitive Literary Studies
• Theories of Reception, Adaptation, and Appropriation

Submissions regarding the so-called ‘authorship’ question will not be considered.

Deadline for submissions: 1 February 2025.

If you have any questions about the edition or ideas for a potential submission, or would like to submit an abstract, please contact adam.hansen@northumbria.ac.uk.