The idea for this volume came out of two series of lectures on Renaissance figures of speech organised in the Faculty of English at Cambridge in 1995 and 1996 by Sylvia Adamson and the late Jeremy Maule. The dedication of this volume to Jeremy is a small tribute to his role in fostering the properly historicised study of early-modern rhetoric by scholars and students over the past two decades. Many of his ideas are reflected in chapters presented here, and in some cases they are direct responses to the thoughtful and thought-provoking suggestions, offered in passing, that many of us remember receiving from him. The editors hope that this volume represents a new approach to the subject of the kind that he wished to see.

We would like to thank Sarah Stanton at Cambridge University Press for her encouragement and astute advice. In the later stages of production we benefited from the skills of our copy-editor, Susan Beer, and our indexer, David Parry, who also disentangled some knotty points of referencing.

We are grateful to the Judith E. Wilson Fund of the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge and to the Master and Fellows of Christ's College, Cambridge for funding a symposium in September 2005 at which the contributors met, exchanged views, and offered preliminary versions of their chapters. The dialogue begun then continues in this volume and, we hope, will not end here.