This volume treats early modern song as a musical and embodied practice and considers the implications of reading song not just as lyric text, but as a musical phenomenon that is the product of the singing body. It draws on a variety of genres, from theatre to psalm translations, sonnets and lyrics, and household drama to courtly masques.

Katherine R. Larson is Professor of English at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Early Modern Women in Conversation (Palgrave, 2011) and co-editor of Gender and Song in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2014), and Re-Reading Mary Wroth (Palgrave, 2015). A former Rhodes Scholar and the winner of the 2008 John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature, Professor Larson is a member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.

• List of Figures


• Track List for Companion Recording


• Abbreviations


• Note on the Text


• Prologue


• 1: Airy Forms


• 2: Breath of Sirens


• 3: Voicing Lyric


• 4: Household Songs


• 5: Sweet Echo


• Epilogue


• Works Cited