General

From The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the early 1590s to The Two Noble Kinsmen at the end of his career around 1614, Shakespeare wrote at least eighteen plays that can be called 'comedies': a far higher number than that for any other genre in which he...

This new casebook on A Midsummer Night's Dream traces the response of critical theory to a play peculiarly informed by modern preoccupations: imagination, representation and power, sexual repression and subjective transformation, patriarchal society,...

"Shakespeare Now!" is a series of short books of truly vital literary scholarship, each with its own distinctive form. "Shakespeare Now!" recaptures the excitement of Shakespeare; it doesn't assume we know him already, or that we know the best methods...

This book explores the revivals of Shakespeare's history plays during the Victorian period, as staged by the famous actor-manager Charles Kean. Between 1852 and 1859, Kean produced celebrated productions of Henry V, Henry VIII, King John, Macbeth and...

This book provides an accessible account of the poet and politician Andrew Marvell's life (1621-1678) and of the great events which found reflection in his work and in which he and his writings eventually played a part. At the same time, considerable...

What does it mean to teach Shakespeare with purpose? It means freeing teachers from the notion that teaching Shakespeare means teaching everything, or teaching "Western Civilisation" and universal themes. Instead, this invigorating new book equips...

By the end of the seventeenth century the most effective means of persuasion and communication was the pamphlet, which created influential moral and political communities of readers, and thus formed a 'public sphere' of popular, political opinion. This...

How did individuals write about their lives before a modern tradition of diaries and autobiographies was established? Adam Smyth examines the kinds of texts that sixteenth- or seventeenth-century individuals produced to register their life, in the...

By the end of the seventeenth century the most effective means of persuasion and communication was the pamphlet, which created influential moral and political communities of readers, and thus formed a 'public sphere' of popular, political opinion. This...

The principal text translated in this volume is the Ta'rikh Al-sudan of the seventeenth-century Timbuktu scholar 'Abd al-Rah man al-Sa'di. Thirty chapters are included, dealing with the history of Timbuktu and Jenne, their scholars, and the political...

From one of the great modern writers, the acclaimed lectures in which he draws on a lifetime of experience to take the measure of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets "W. H. Auden, poet and critic, will conduct a course on Shakespeare at the New School for...

The Tempest contains sublime poetry and catchy songs, magic and low comedy, while it tackles important contemporary concerns: education, power politics, the effects of colonization, and technology. In this guide, Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason...

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's much-loved sonnets and poems. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of Shakespeare's Sonnets and Other...

A reimagining of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions as an original treatment of human life shaped by innovations in seventeenth-century science and medicine.   In 1624, poet and preacher John Donne published Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, a book that...

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment brings together 42 of the most important scholars and writing on the subject today. Extending the purview of feminist criticism, it offers an intersectional paradigm for considering representations of...

As a figurehead for the literary humanities, and a dramatist whose plays feature fairies, ghosts, and spirits, Shakespeare may not be the first author that comes to mind when thinking about science. Tom Rutter shows, however, that in his plays and poetry...

ARDEN RENAISSANCE DRAMA GUIDES offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Essays from leading international scholars provide invaluable insights into...

This classic of Shakespeare scholarship begins with a masterly introductory essay analysing and exemplifying the various categories of sexual and non-sexual bawdy expressions and allusions in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. The main body of the work...

This accessible and interdisciplinary volume addresses a fundamental need in current education in language, literature and drama. Many of today's students lack the grammatical and linguistic skills to enable them to study Shakespearean and other...

Shakespeare's history plays, as fresh today as when they were written, are based upon the assumption that time is not simply a destroyer but a preserver, and that 'examples past' might enable us to understand the present and anticipate the future. This...

If science has replaced God, is life necessarily meaningless? This book argues that the advances of science and the retreat of religion in secular society does not have to mean a life without spirituality.About the AuthorMark Vernon began his...

Why did theatre audiences laugh in Shakespeare's day? Why do they still laugh now? What did Shakespeare do with the conventions of comedy that he inherited, so that his plays continue to amuse and move audiences? What do his comedies have to say about...

Ian McEwan is one of Britain's most established, and controversial, writers. This book introduces students to a range of critical approaches to McEwan's fiction. Criticism is drawn from selections in academic essays and articles, and reviews in...

Despite Martin Heidegger's influence on twentieth-century philosophy, understanding his way of thinking is difficult if one relies solely on the English translations of his work. Since Gilbert Ryle misjudged his work in a 1929 review of Sein und Zeit,...

Honorable Mention, Modern Language Association Prize for a Scholarly Edition, Modern Language Association This edition includes all of the known surviving writings of the poet Phillis Wheatley Peters (1753-1784), several of which have been discovered...

Macbeth clutches an imaginary dagger; Hamlet holds up Yorick's skull; Lear enters with Cordelia in his arms. Do these memorable and iconic moments have anything to tell us about the definition of Shakespearean tragedy? Is it in fact helpful to talk about...

Most scholarly attention on Shakespeare's vocabulary has been directed towards his enrichment of the language through borrowing words from other languages, and has thus concentrated on the more learned aspects of his vocabulary. However, the bulk of...

This diachronic study of Boudica serves as a sourcebook of references to Boudica in the early modern period and gives an overview of the ways in which her story was processed and exploited by the different players of the times who wanted to give credence...

Critical theory and dystopia offers a uniquely rich study of dystopian fiction, drawing on the insights of critical theory. Asking what ideological work these dark imaginings perform, the book reconstructs the historical emergence, consolidation and...

Latin was for many centuries the common literary language of Europe, and Latin literature of immense range, stylistic power and social and political significance was produced throughout Europe and beyond from the time of Petrarch (c.1400) well into the...

Examines the departure from meter and rhyme in modern poetry and the increased use of free verseBook InformationISBN 9781557281265Author Timothy SteeleFormat PaperbackPage Count 264Imprint University of Arkansas PressPublisher University of Arkansas...

With an A-Z of over 300 entries, Music in Shakespeare is the most comprehensive study of all the musical terms found in Shakespeare's complete works. It includes a definition of each musical term in itshistorical and theoretical context, and explores the...

With Shylock's pound of flesh and Portia's golden ring,The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most controversial, disturbing and unforgettable plays.Combining accessible commentary with a range of reprinted materials, S. P. Cerasano:*explores the...

Shakespeare and Digital Performance in Practice explores the impact of digital technologies on the theatrical performance of Shakespeare in the twenty-first century, both in terms of widening cultural access and developing new forms of artistry. Through...

This book - for a decade the most highly regarded general introduction to Shakespeare - offers students a clear and practical method of approaching a Shakespeare play. This major new edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded to include five new...

This guide offers an introduction to the basic skills and intellectual tools required for making a study of fiction. It presents an explanation of the most common features of prose, using practical examples drawn from six short stories which are included...

With the publication of her first book of criticism, Against Interpretation, in 1966, Susan Sontag placed herself at the forefront of an era of cultural and political transformation. "What is important now," she wrote, "is to recover our senses . . . ...

This book offers an analysis of the life and thought of the writer Samuel Johnson from an historian's viewpoint, reversing the orthodoxy which has dominated the subject for over thirty years. Jonathan Clark, who has written extensively on English and...

Hamlet is one of the best known works of English literature throughout the world, and its central character one of Shakespeare's most recognisable and enduring creations. Hamlet's first critics in the seventeenth century were, however, concerned with...

For decades, people have been studying Shakespeare's life and times and in recent years there has been a renewed surge of interest in aspects of his language. So how can we better understand Shakespeare? David Crystal provides a lively and original...