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Brings a fresh and contemporary approach to study of classic texts and plays so will appeal to students Easy to adapt to courses as looks at canonical plays which are frequently studied (Hamlet, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice) Written in a personal and accessible style so easy for readers of all levels to understand The author has a high media profile and is well-known and well-connected in the area, as well as being an award-winning academic

In the middle years of the sixteenth century, English drama witnessed the emergence of the 'tyrant by entrie' or the usurper, who supplanted earlier 'tyrant by the administration' as the main antihero of political drama. This usurper or, in Machiavellian terms principe nuove, was the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own 'virtu' and through an act of 'lawmaking' violence. Early Tudor morality plays were exclusively concerned with the legitimate monarch who...

Literature serves many purposes, and one of them certainly proves to be to convey messages, wisdom, and instruction, and this across languages, religions, and cultures. Beyond that, as the contributors to this volume underscore, people have always endeavored to reach out to their community members, that is, to build community, to learn from each other, and to teach. Hence, this volume explores the meaning of communication, translation, and community building based on the medium of language. Whil...

This book investigates the construction of identity and the precarity of the self in the work of the Calvinist Fulke Greville (1554–1628) and the Jesuit Robert Southwell (1561–1595). For the first time, a collection of original essays unites them with the aim to explore their literary production. The essays collected here define these authors’ efforts to forge themselves as literary, religious, and political subjects amid a shifting politico-religious landscape. They highlight the authors’ criti...

In this slim, poetically powerful volume, Piero Boitani develops his earlier work in The Bible and Its Rewritings, focusing on Shakespeare's "rescripturing" of the Gospels. Boitani persuasively urges that Shakespeare read the New Testament with great care and an overall sense of affirmation and participation, and that many of his plays constitute their own original testament, insofar as they translate the good news into human terms. In Hamlet and King Lear, he suggests, Shakespeare's "New Testam...

Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The 2018 volume features essays presented at the conference at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as essays submitted directly to the journal. The volume opens with four essays on Shakespearean drama, offering readings ranging from the heteroglossia in Henry VIII to the limits of language in King Lear, social networks in Anthony and Cleopatra, and epiphanic e...

Rereading Chaucer and Spenser is a much-needed volume that brings together established and early career scholars to provide new critical approaches to the relationship between Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. By reading one of the greatest poets of the Middle Ages alongside one of the greatest poets of the English Renaissance, this collection poses questions about poetic authority, influence, and the nature of intertextual relations in a more wide-ranging manner than ever before. With its du...

Of all of Jonson's plays, Bartholomew Fair with its focus on the conflict between a carnivalesque enjoyment of the flesh and society's desire for order and control, speaks most directly to the modern audience. This edition is the first to use the findings of feminist scholarship in examining the play's concern with forced marriage, pregnancy, sexual commerce and widowhood. Glosses and notes are provided for students and theatre-goers clarifying the language and dialects Jonson uses to individual...

The Golden Age of Spanish mysticism has traditionally been read in terms of individual authors or theological traditions. God Made Word, however, considers early modern Spanish mysticism as a question of language and as a discourse that circulated in concrete social, institutional, and geographic spaces. Proposing a new reading of early modern Spanish mysticism, God Made Word traces the struggles over the representation of interiorized spiritual union - the tension between making it known and...

This edition of Jonson's great Roman tragedy is more intensively researched than any that has previously appeared. The text is based on extensive collation of the 1605 and 1616 versions and takes the earlier version as "copy-text." The introduction offers a radically new assessment of Jonson's "historiography" and his treatment of sources. It provides an explanation for the charge of treason leveled at Jonson over Sejanus and for which he had to answer to the Privy Council. Explanatory notes...

This excellent collection of essays and texts surveys the culture and intellectual context of early modern Italy in order to render more intelligible the writing of Italian women. The role of women in society and the persistent misogyny even of the most pro-woman texts are explored in the essays, and the recent critical debates are examined. The translations make available in English a selection of male-authored texts which directly or indirectly elicited the spirited responses of women, for whi...

This volume is a photographic facsimile from the copy of the play by George Wapull in the Harry Ransom Centre.It was originally printed in 1576 by Hugh Jackson, and is one of only five extant copies. The introduction discusses the place of this play in Jackson's output, including two other interludes printed by him shortly afterwards. Besides compositorial practice and some irregularities, it addresses the identity of the author, historical detail about the surviving copies, and the editorial c...

First published in 1978, this book represents a study of the ways in which Shakespeare exploits the possibilities of metaphor. In a series of studies ranging from the early to the mature Shakespeare, the author concentrates on metaphor as a controlling structure - the extent to which a certain metaphoric idea informs and organises the drama. These studies turn constantly to the relations between symbol and metaphor, literal and figurative, and examine key plays such as Richard III, King John, He...

First published in 1971, this book provides a historical account of the fortunes of Rhetoric. Beginning with a study of classical rhetorical theory and practice, it goes on to explore the impact of rhetoric on English literature and the renunciation of rhetoric from the late 17th century. The book concludes with a survey of the ways in which rhetoric was revived and re-modelled in the 20th century and its bearings on the practice and theory of literary criticism. This book will be of interest to...

Studies that connect the Spanish 17th and 20th centuries usually do so through a conservative lens, assuming that the blunt imperialism of the early modern age, endlessly glorified by Franco’s dictatorship, was a constant in the Spanish imaginary. This book, by contrast, recuperates the thriving, humanistic vision of the Golden Age celebrated by Spanish progressive thinkers, writers, and artists in the decades prior to 1939 and the Francoist Regime. The hybrid, modern stance of the country in th...

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy presents fifty-four essays by a range of scholars from all parts of the world. Together these essays offer readers a fresh and comprehensive understanding of Shakespeare tragedies as both works of literature and as performance texts written by a playwright who was himself an experienced actor. The opening section explores ways in which later generations of critics have shaped our idea of 'Shakespearean' tragedy, and addresses questions of genre by exa...

How original was Shakespeare and how was Shakespeare original? This lucid, innovative book sets about answering these questions by putting them in historical context and investigating how the dramatist worked with his sources: plays, poems, chronicles and prose romances. Shakespeare's Originality unlocks its topic with rewarding precision and flair, showing through a series of case studies that range across the output-from the mature comedies to the great tragedies, from Richard III to The Tem...

Antonio and Mellida was the first play by John Marston performed by the newly revived Paul's Company in 1599. Marston sought to display a variety of talents, comic, tragic, satiric and historical, advertising his own dramatic skills and the prowess of the choristers of Paul's. The play is based on incidents in the reigns of Sforza, Francesco, Galeazzo and Lodovico, who were Dukes of Milan in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Marston displays a detailed knowledge of the dramatic w...

The best-known of the Jacobean tragedies; an exemplary model of the -tragedy of blood.-