Professor Cathy Shrank

School of English

Faculty Director of Research and Innovation

English Cathy Shrank
Profile picture of English Cathy Shrank
c.shrank@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 8485
Jessop West

Full contact details

Professor Cathy Shrank
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
Profile

My research focuses on early modern (or Renaissance) literature and culture. My interest in this area stems back to my undergraduate days at Cambridge, where a course on comparative literature introduced me to the poetry of the Henrician courtier Thomas Wyatt and his translations of Petrarch. I pursued this interest in early and mid-Tudor writing an often neglected part of the canon through my Masters and PhD, which looked at formations of English national identity in the decades after the break with Rome.

I moved to Sheffield in 2005, after stints at Kings College London and the University of Aberdeen.

Research interests

My research ranges from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth century, and moves between poetry, prose, and drama, and between texts in manuscript and print. It also includes less obviously literary forms of writing, such as medical or educational works, although Ive also written on hypercanonical figures like Shakespeare. The eclectic nature of what I study is exemplified by an on-going project on English dialogues: works written in the form of a conversation. These cover all sorts of topics, from teaching skills such as archery or maths, to the behaviour of women, or pressing political issues such as the marriage of Elizabeth I, the role of parliament, or the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. 

A lot of my research involves scholarly editing. Projects (completed and on-going) include Shakespeares poems, the works of the Elizabethan writer Thomas Nashe, and William Tyndales Parable of the Wicked Mammon. As with the work on dialogues, annotating these texts takes you down often unexpected paths, from working out the date of solar and lunar eclipses to acquiring a detailed knowledge of early modern insults. Soon I will be getting back to where my academic journey began, with an edition of the poems of Thomas Wyatt.

Other forthcoming work includes essays on the marital correspondence of Sir John Cheke, the relationship between literature and history, and a collection of essays (co-edited with Phil Withington) on Thomas Mores Utopia.

Publications

Books

  • Shrank C (2006) Writing the nation in Reformation England, 1530-1580. Oxford University Press on Demand.

Edited books

  • Shrank C & Withington P (Ed.) (2023) . Oxford University Press.
  • Pincombe M & Shrank C (Ed.) (2009) . OUP Oxford.

Journal articles

  • Cornish A, De Rycker K & Shrank C (2024) . English: Journal of the English Association, 73(282), 107-110.
  • Shrank C (2019) . Reformation, 24(2), 59-75.
  • Shrank C (2016) . Reformation, 21(2), 128-130.
  • Shrank C & Pincombe M (2010) Doing Away with the Drab Age. Literature Compass.
  • Shrank C (2009) . European Journal of English Studies, 13(1), 110-112.
  • Shrank C (2009) Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, A Companion to The Collected Works. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES, 13(1), 111-112.
  • Shrank C (2009) Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: John Benson and the 1640 Poems. Shakespeare, 5(3), 271-291.
  • Shrank C (2008) . Reformation, 13(1), 230-232.
  • Shrank C (2008) 'But I that knew what harbred in that hed': Thomas Wyatt and his posthumous interpreters. Proceedings of the British Academy, 154, 375-401.
  • Shrank C (2008) . Studies in Philology, 105(1), 30-49.
  • Shrank C (2008) Trollers and Dreamers: Defining the Citizen-Subject in Sixteenth-Century Cheap Print. Yearbook of English Studies, 38(1/2), 102-118.
  • Shrank C (2006) . Reformation, 11(1), 227-230.
  • Shrank C (2006) . Notes and Queries, 53(4), 421-422.
  • Shrank C (2004) . Huntington Library Quarterly, 67(2), 295-314.
  • Shrank C (2003) . Shakespeare Quarterly, 54(4), 406-423.
  • Shrank C (2000) . Reformation, 5(1), 1-26.
  • Shrank C () . Huntington Library Quarterly, 73, 523-541.

Book chapters

  • Shrank C (2024) , Form and Power in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (pp. 241-258). Boydell and Brewer
  • Shrank C (2022) , History in the Humanities and Social Sciences (pp. 286-305). Cambridge University Press
  • Shrank C (2022) , The Oxford History of Poetry in English (pp. 405-421). Oxford University Press
  • Shrank C (2021) , The Cambridge Connection in Tudor England (pp. 232-251). BRILL
  • Shrank CL & Werstine P (2021) (pp. 53-70). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  • Shrank C (2020) , Early Modern Literature and England's Long Reformation (pp. 7-23). Routledge
  • Shrank CL (2020) In Nicholas L & Law C (Ed.), Roger Ascham and His Sixteenth-Century World (pp. 208-225). Brill
  • Shrank C (2020) , Memory and the English Reformation (pp. 334-350). Cambridge University Press
  • Shrank C (2020) , Enacting the Bible in medieval and early modern drama Manchester University Press
  • Shrank C (2019) Masters of civility: Castigliones Courtier, Della Casas Galateo and Guazzos Civil Conversation in early modern England In Marrapodi M (Ed.), The Routledge Research Companion to Anglo-Italian Renaissance Literature and Culture (pp. 144-159). Routledge
  • Shrank C (2018) (pp. 376-388). Wiley
  • Shrank C & Lyne R (2017) , The Complete Poems of Shakespeare (pp. 269-623). Routledge
  • Shrank C & Lyne R (2017) , The Complete Poems of Shakespeare (pp. 251-267). Routledge
  • Shrank C & Lyne R (2017) , The Complete Poems of Shakespeare (pp. xiii-xv). Routledge
  • Shrank C & Lyne R (2017) , The Complete Poems of Shakespeare (pp. 625-661). Routledge
  • Shrank CL (2017) Mocking or mirthful? Laughter in early modern dialogue In Knights MJ & Morton A (Ed.), The Power of Laughter and Satire in Early Modern Britain: Political and Religious Culture, 1500-1820 Boydell and Brewer
  • Shrank C (2017) Cross Sections (I): 1516-1520 In Keymer T (Ed.), The Oxford History of the Novel in English, vol. 1 (pp. 46-54). Oxford University Press
  • Shrank CL (2017) On Error In Loffman C & Phillips H (Ed.), A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts (pp. 139-146). Routledge
  • Shrank C (2017) , A Social History of England, 15001750 (pp. 19-38). Cambridge University Press
  • Shrank C (2017) Promising Eternity in the 1609 Quarto, Sonnets the State of Play (pp. 13-31).
  • Shrank C (2016) , <I>A Mirror for Magistrates</I> in Context (pp. 109-125). Cambridge University Press
  • Shrank C (2016) , Edmund Spenser in Context (pp. 176-184). Cambridge University Press
  • Shrank CL (2016) In Copeland R (Ed.), The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature: Volume 1: 800-1558 (pp. 583-600). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Shrank CL (2016) Diss矇quer le corps politique: la Couronne et le Parlement dans les dialogues politiques anglais du d矇but du XVIIe si癡cle In Bouhaik-Girones M (Ed.), Usages et strat矇gies pol矇miques en Europe, XIVe-premier XVIIe si癡cle (pp. 155-166). Peter Lang
  • Shrank CL (2015) Mise-en-page, the Authors Genius, the capacity of the Reader, and the ambition of a Good Compositer, In Archer C & Peters L (Ed.), Religion and the Book Trade (pp. 66-82). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Shrank C (2015) , The Shakespeare Circle (pp. 49-56). Cambridge University Press
  • Shrank CL (2013) All talk and no action? Early modern political dialogue, The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Prose (pp. 27-42). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Shrank C (2012) Beastly Metamorpohoses: Losing Control in Early Modern Literary Culture In Herring J (Ed.), Intoxication and Society (pp. 193-209). Palgrave MacMillan
  • Shrank C (2011) Oxford University Press
  • Shrank CL (2011) 1553, Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, Vol 1 (pp. 537-547). Oxford University Press
  • Shrank CL (2010) Society In Kinney AF (Ed.), Elizabethan and Jacobean England Wiley-Blackwell
  • Shrank C (2009) , Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought (pp. 101-118). Cambridge University Press
  • Shrank C (2009) The Politics of Shakespeare's Sonnets In Armitage D, Condren C & Fitzmaurice A (Ed.), Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought (pp. 101-118). Cambridge University Press
  • Shrank C & Pincombe M (2009) The Travails of Tudor Literature In Pincombe M & Shrank C (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature:1485-1603 (pp. 1-19). OUP Oxford
  • Shrank CL (2009) 'Sir Thomas Elyot and the Bonds of Community' In Shrank C (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature (pp. 154-169). Oxford University Press
  • Pincombe M & Shrank C (2009) In Shrank C & Pincombe M (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature: 1485-1603
  • Shrank C (2008) Stammering, snoring and other problems in Early Modern dialogue In Blakeley J & Pincombe M (Ed.), Writing and Reform in Sixteenth-Century England (pp. 179-192).
  • Shrank C (2007) John Bale and reconfiguring the 'medieval' in Reformation England, READING THE MEDIEVAL IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND (pp. 179-+).
  • Withington P & Shrank C () , The Oxford Handbook of Thomas More's Utopia (pp. 1-16). Oxford University Press
  • Shrank C () , The Oxford Handbook of Thomas More's Utopia (pp. 231-247). Oxford University Press
  • Shrank C () Wiley
  • Shrank C () Manuscript, Authenticity and 'evident proofs' against the Scottish Queen (pp. 198-218).

Book reviews

  • Shrank C (2017) Genesis of genius. Times Literary Supplement(5985), 12-12.

Conference proceedings

  • Shrank C (2003) (pp 19-34)

Scholarly editions

  • Shrank C & Lyne R (2017) . Routledge.

Dictionary or encyclopaedia entries

  • Shrank CL (2010) Community. In Cultural Reformations Oxford University Press.
Research group

I welcome applications from potential research students in any area of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature and culture.

Current and former PhDs include projects on Post-War Polish productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream; Draytons Poly-olbion; representations of Thomas Wolsey from Skelton to Shakespeare; Tudor women writers; a comparative study of the influence of Galen in England and Italy; and editions of a number of important early manuscripts (Burley; V&A Dyce MS 44; BL Harleian MS 7392(2); BL Additional MS 36529).

Teaching activities

My teaching at undergraduate and Masters level mainly focuses on the period 1500-1800.