Vincent Mennella

Biography

My research contributes to a developing line of early modern scholarship grounded in posthumanism that displaces “the human” as a uniquely privileged, distinct, and autonomous entity. My current book project, Making the Golden World: Posthumanism and Poetics Conceits of Material Wealth in Early Modern Literature and Drama tells the story of how the early modern world was fashioned in poetry through competing conceits of allegorical and alchemical counterfeiting, in which allegory conceals and alchemy exposes the subordination of moral virtue to the pursuit of material profit. Through close readings of Sir Philip Sidney’s poetics and poesy, Sir Walter Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana, Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, William Shakespeare’s drama, and Ben Jonson’s plays and masques, this book argues that material gold underlies the development of racial, social, and national categories.

Current Role

Duwain E. Hughes Postdoctoral Fellow at Southern Methodist University

Dissertation Title

Making the Golden World: Allegories and Alchemies of Material Wealth in Early Modern Literature and Drama

Area of Expertise

Early Modern Literature

Medieval Literature

British Literature

Poetry and Poetics

Literary Theory

Peer-Reviewed Publications

“Calidore innamorato: Spenser’s Allegory of Courtesy and the Renaissance Poetics of Heroism Arising from Erotic Desire in The Faerie Queene,” Forthcoming: Philological Quarterly 104 (2025).

“Vexed Relationships with Rome: Arthur’s Dragon Crest and Spenser’s Representations of Conquest, Empire, and Christendom in The Faerie Queene.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 50, no.1-2 (2024):40–67.

Selected Awards

Shakespeare Association of America: Graduate Student Travel Grant

Renaissance Society of America: 2024 Graduate Student Travel Grant

International Spenser Society: 2022-2023 Anne Lake Prescott Graduate Student Travel Grant (Inaugural Recipient)

International Courtly Literature Society: 2019-2020 Emerging Scholar Grant