Introduction

Abstract The Introduction describes Hercules as he would have been perceived in England in the early sixteenth century and outlines the book’s critical and methodological principles, including the significance of classical geographical writing as a source for mythological information and writing in early modern England, and the literary concept of place/topos. Drawing on accounts of Hercules in early modern dictionaries and mythological wordlists, the Introduction shows that by this period Hercules is a mythological figure with diverse and contradictory tonal, generic, and textual incarnations, who was sometimes viewed as several figures rather than a single individual. This potential plurality makes the early modern Hercules a radically unstable figure able to invoke a wide range of tonal and generic possibilities in texts, without necessitating their subsumption into a single, stable individual.