Renaissance literature; Aesthetics; Classical traditions; Poetics; Epic; Rhetoric
Rachel Eisendrath is Associate Professor of English and director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at Barnard College. Specializing in sixteenth-century English poetry, she has published widely on Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, including these poets' use of classical literature. Her first book, Poetry in a World of Things: Aesthetics and Empiricism in Renaissance Ekphrasis (University of Chicago Press, 2018), won the Elizabeth Dietz Award for the best publication in early modern English literary studies and, for a chapter on the relationship of Marlowe's Hero and Leander with Greek romances, the Roma Gill Prize for the best publication in Marlowe studies. She is also author of Gallery of Clouds (New York Review Books, 2021), a work of creative nonfiction that centers on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and pastoral traditions.