Constituting Old Age in Early Modern English Literature, from Queen Elizabeth to King Lear

Acknowledgments

xi Acknowledgments Over the course of this project’s leisurely evolution, I have enjoyed numerous opportunities to air my ideas as they took shape. My thanks to the various organizing committees of the 2003 “Elizabeth R” quatercentenary conference, the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, the John Donne Society conference, and the Boston University Lectures in Criticism Series, and to all those in attendance who responded thoughtfully to the tentative notions I then put forward. Two of these presentations went on to see early publication. A portion of Chapter 2 appeared as “The Breast and Belly of a Queen: Elizabeth after Tilbury,” in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (2007), a publication of the Center for the Humanities (University of Miami) and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (©Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University). Another section of Chapter 4 appeared as “Fall and Decline: Confronting Lyric Gerontophobia in Donne’s ‘The Autumnall,’” in John Donne Journal 26 (2007). I thank the editors of these journals for permission to reprint. In particular, my gratitude goes to Professors Ilona Bell and Adele Seeff, who offered kind moral and practical support, at short notice, when it was most needed; I hope this study offers some small return on their good collegiality. Toward its crucial final stages, the book benefited from a full year’s leave funded by the Boston University Center for the Humanities, enabling timely completion of the manuscript. I’m grateful. The exemplary manner of the University of Massachusetts Press’s editorial board has kept the publication process a congenially encouraging one at every turn. The anonymous readers’ generous and pointed recommendations , coupled with a relaxed willingness to grant me the extra time needed to accommodate these suggestions, made for the most rewarding kind of professional experience. Whatever shortcomings remain in the final product, the argument is decidedly stronger for their good direction. xii Acknowledgments Down the stretch, Bruce Wilcox graciously sped things along with remarkable facility. It was a delight working with Barbara Folsom, whose expert copyediting skills refreshed the manuscript throughout, helping me especially to dodge patches of stylistic quaintness to which I’d grown deaf; her own amicable style and humor kept this last revisionary phase both enjoyable and instructive. I likewise thank Carol Betsch and Mary Bellino for the friendly efficiency with which they saw the book into final production. I also take pleasure in the chance once again to express my warmest appreciation to Arthur F. Kinney, founder and series editor of Massachusetts Studies in Early Modern Culture, for his consistent receptivity, guidance, and support, from which so very many of us in the field have benefited over the space of his long and distinguished career. On the home front, heartfelt thanks to my wife, Lydia Martin, for her quiet support throughout the time this book has developed, and for all the thirty-seven years of love and companionship I’ve known in her company; I have no greater ambition than to grow old together with her. Finally and especially, I acknowledge my big sister, Lorraine Martin, for teaching me early on how important it is to take full advantage of all our years. Amid my otherwise provincial and parochial upbringing, her example as a woman who struck out to explore Hawai‘i before its statehood, land marlin off the coast of Mexico, and crash voodoo rituals in Haiti showed what it meant to pursue experience aggressively. Eighty-five years old as I write this, she continues to do things her own way, and there’s no truer legacy than that. I’m happy to be able to dedicate this book about late life, with much love, to her. Constituting Old Age in Early Modern English Literature, from Queen Elizabeth to King Lear “This page intentionally left blank” ...