This volume addresses the multiple, complex and overlapping, sometimes contradictory and frequently strange forms of knowledge in circulation during a period which has always been recognized as a turning point in the intellectual history of Western Europe, and which is described alternatively as "early modern" or "Renaissance". The problems of the label "early modern" are discussed, including the implied rupture with earlier periods, and the consequent denial of the difference or "otherness" of the complex material particularities - the textures - of these forms of knowledge. It is to a variety of such textures - to textualized spaces and material artifacts as well as to "literay" and "non-literary" texts - that the distinguished contributors to this volume attend. Drawing on a range of critical discourses they engage with these textures in the more nuanced styles of interpretative practice which are emerging in the wake of new historicism and cultural materialism, and which represent a significant shift in critical approach and focus. Individual essays as well as the volume as a whole should be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to scholars of the period.