Introduction.

This introduction to the special issue of English Literature dedicated to Early Modern Scepticism and the Culture of Paradox locates the discussion contained in the issue within the context of the recent reappraisal of sceptical thought and paradoxical discourse. Identifying the main ideological and critical lines of a vivacious debate inaugurated in the mid-twentieth century, the introduction raises questions on how various forms of paradox are related to modes of doubt and self-doubt. Spanning form the early sixteenth century to the Caroline period, it establishes the main routes of investigation, showing how different perspectives may coexist within one and the same context: from the use of god-language to paradox as a carnivalised form of scepticism, from the mock encomium to eulogy in a culture of patronage, from the language of paradoxical excess in metaphysical poetry to inwardness and the contradictions inherent in the theatrical expression of the self, finally to the nihilistic overtones of paradox in Shakespeare and Webster, and the gradual dissolving of the sceptical tensions of metaphysical paradox into a neoclassical «mixt witticism» with the advancing of time.