Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800 Books

Book SynopsisTimon of Athens has struck many readers as rough and unpolished, perhaps even unfinished, though to others it has appeared as Shakespeare's most profound tragic allegory. Described by Coleridge as 'the stillborn twin of King Lear', the play has nevertheless proved brilliantly effective in performance over the past thirty or forty years.This edition accepts and contributes to the growing scholarly consensus that the play is not Shakespeare's solo work, but is the result of his collaboration with Thomas Middleton, who wrote about a third of it. The editors offer an account of the process of collaboration and discuss the different ways that each author contributes to the play's relentless look at the corruption and greed of society. They provide, as well, detailed annotation of the text and explore the wide range of critical and theatrical interpretations that the play has engendered. Tracing both its satirical and tragic strains, their introduction presents a perspective on the play's meanings that combines careful elucidation of historical context with analysis of its relevance to modern-day society. An extensive and well-illustrated account of the play's production history generates a rich sense of how the play can speak to different historical moments in specific and rewarding ways.Trade Review'...a critical introduction that...could scarcely be better...an admirable edition of Shakespeare and Middleton's challenging collaberative play.' Shakespeare Quarterly (2009)

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn All’s Well That Ends Well, Helen, a lowly ward, risks her life to satisfy her boundless love for Bertram, a count and ward to the King of France. Following him to Paris, she concocts an endangering plan to win the King of France’s favour and induce Bertram’s hand in marriage. In the comprehensive introduction to this new, fully-illustrated Arden edition, Suzanne Gossett takes a transformative look at the play’s critical and performance history by offering fresh perspectives on the conundrum of genre, sexuality and moral dilemmas with masculinity and the structures of family. The authoritative play text is amply annotated to clarify its language and allusions, and two appendices debate the play’s authorship and review its casting. Offering students and scholars alike a wealth of insight and new research, this edition maintains the rigorous standards of the Arden Shakespeare.Trade ReviewThe best edition available with a particularly thoughtful and undogmatic introduction. * Paul Hartle, University of Cambridge, UK *Table of ContentsList of illustrations General editors’ preface Preface Introduction ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL Appendix 1: Casting All's Well That Ends Well Appendix 2: The Authorship Debate Abbreviations and references Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe period from 1650 to 1800 encompasses the Restoration, the 1688 Revolution, the failure of the Company of Scotland's Darien colony, the 1707 Acts of Union, the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745, and the emergence of the new British Empire as a global superpower. It also witnessed religious, economic, and social upheavals, the beginnings of industrialisation, and the start of the Clearances, as well as the astonishing efflorescence of intellectual activity known as the Scottish Enlightenment. This International Companion offers new perspectives on how the long eighteenth century transformed Scotland's literary cultures both high and low, dominant and marginalised in English, Gaelic, Latin, and Scots.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDespite the reshifting of values that has affected every aspect of life in the 21st century, William Shakespeare still stands as the greatest writer the English language has ever produced. Even so, many people have never read him. If you have never read the Bard-or if you''ve tried and given up in frustration-you need SHAKESPEARE FOR BEGINNERS.Author Brandon Toropov opens with the observation that Shakespeare''s genius is not in his (or England''s) history, it''s in his words, most notably, his plays-in his brilliant stories, unforgettable characters, and the impossible beauty of his language. So SHAKESPEARE FOR BEGINNERS skips the historical foreplay and goes straight to Shakespeare''s plays. The book offers clear, concise descriptions and plot summaries of each play; it lists key phrases and important themes, explains the main ideas behind each work and features excerpt of important passages (with explanatory notes on tough words.) And it is the only ''entry level'' book available outside Great Britain that covers all of Shakespeare''s plays.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisRadical Botany uncovers a speculative tradition that conjures new languages to grasp the life of plants in all its specificity and vigor. Plants complement and challenge notions of human life. The book traces the implications of the speculative mobilization of plants within literature and art for feminism, queer studies, and posthumanist thought.Table of ContentsPreface | vii 1. Radical Botany: An Introduction | 1 2. Libertine Botany and Vegetal Modernity | 28 3. Plant Societies and Enlightened Vegetality | 56 4. The Inorganic Plant in the Romantic Garden | 86 5. The End of the World by Other Means | 114 6. Plant Horror: Love Your Own Pod | 144 7. Becoming Plant Nonetheless | 171 Acknowledgments | 203 Notes | 205 Works Cited | 253 Index | 269

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom Gerald Ford''s preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump''s claims that as president he could pardon himself to the posthumous royal pardon of Alan Turing, the power of the pardon has a powerful hold on the political and cultural imagination. In Theaters of Pardoning, Bernadette Meyler traces the roots of contemporary understandings of pardoning to tragicomic theaters of pardoning in the drama and politics of seventeenth-century England. Shifts in how pardoning was represented on the stage and discussed in political tracts and in Parliament reflected the transition from a more monarchical and judgment-focused form of the concept to an increasingly parliamentary and legislative vision of sovereignty.Meyler shows that on the English stage, individual pardons of revenge subtly transformed into more sweeping pardons of revolution, from Shakespeare''s Measure for Measure, where a series of final pardons interrupts what might otherwise have been a cycleTrade ReviewA valuable contribution to Law and Humanities scholarship and reflection on the future of liberal constitutionalism, Meyler's book cuts to the quick of pardoning practices from seventeenth-century England to contemporary America. Highlighting both the seemingly irresistible draw of pardoning as a theatrical assertion of sovereign power and the revolutionary opportunities latent in the uncoupling of sovereignty from the figure of the sovereign ruler, Meyler pierces the illusion of absolute authority and sets out an alternative Arendtian vision for the state grounded in forgiveness. * The New Rambler *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Theaters of Pardoning 1. Dramatic Judgments: Measure for Measure, Revenge, and the Institution of the Law 2. Emplotting Politics: James I and the "Powder Treason" 3. Non-Sovereign Forgiveness: Mercy among Equals in The Laws of Candy 4. From Sovereignty to the State: The Tragicomic Clemency of Massinger's The Bondman 5. Between Royal Pardons and Acts of Oblivion: The Transitional Justice of Cosmo Manuche and James Compton, Earl of Northampton 6. Pardoning Revolution: The 1660 Act of Oblivion and Hobbes's Recentering of Sovereignty Postlude: Pardoning and Liberal Constitutionalism Appendix A Appendix B Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn London in 1770 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) remarked, ‘What a work could be written on Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick! There is something similar in the genius of all three.’ Two-and-a-half centuries on, Robin Simon’s highly original and illuminating book takes up the challenge.William Hogarth (1697–1764) and David Garrick (1717–1779) closely associated themselves with Shakespeare, embodying a relationship between plays, painting and performance that had been understood since Antiquity and which shaped the rules for history painting drawn up by the Académie royale in Paris in the seventeenth century.History painting was considered the highest form of art: a picture illustrating a moment drawn from just a few lines in a revered text. Hogarth’s David Garrick as Richard III (1745) transformed those ideas because, although it looked like a history painting, it was also a portrait of an actor in performance. With it, Hogarth established the genre of theatrical portraiture, a new and distinctively British kind ofhistory painting.This book offers a fresh examination of theatrical portraits through close analysis of the pictures and of the texts used in performance. It also examines the central role of the theatre in British culture, while highlighting the significance of Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick in the European Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism. In this context another trio of genius features prominently: Lichtenberg, GottholdEphraim Lessing and Denis Diderot.Familiar paintings and performances are seen in an entirely new light, while unfamiliar pictures are also introduced, including major paintings and drawings that have never been published.The final chapter shows that the inter-relationship between plays, painting and performance survived into the age of cinema, revealing the pictorial sources of Laurence Olivier’s legendary film Richard III.

Read more less

Book SynopsisMacbeth may well be the most terrifying play in the English language, but it hasn’t always been seen that way. It has divided critics more deeply than any other Shakespearian tragedy – and the argument, in essence, has been about just how terrifying the play really is and about how we should react, or do react, to Macbeth himself. No Shakespearian tragedy gives as much attention to its hero as Macbeth. With the exception of Lady Macbeth, there is much less emphasis on the figures round the hero than there is in Hamlet or Othello. Unlike King Lear, with its parallel story of Gloucester and his sons, Macbeth has no sub-plot. And its imagery of sharp contrasts – of day and night, light and dark, innocent life and murder – adds to the almost claustrophobic intensity of this most intense of plays. So why are critics so divided about Macbeth? Why is it so disturbing? Why do we feel compelled to admire its hero even as we condemn him? How reassuring is the last scene, when Macbeth is killed and Malcolm becomes king? Do we see this as the intervention of a divine providence, a restoration of goodness after all the evil? Or do we see instead signs that the whole cycle of violence and murder could be about to begin all over again? And what does the play really tell us about good and evil? In this book Graham Bradshaw answers these questions, and shows how it is only in recent years that the extent of Shakespeare’s achievement in Macbeth, and the nature of his vision in the play, has really been grasped.

Read more less

Book Synopsis''He loved all mankind; for fortune prevented him from knowing there were rascals.''Oliver Goldsmith''s hugely successful novel of 1766 remained for generations one of the most highly regarded and beloved works of eighteenth-century fiction. It depicts the fall and rise of the Primrose family, presided over by the benevolent vicar, the narrator of a fairy-tale plot of impersonation and deception, the abduction of a beautiful heroine and the machinations of an aristocratic villain. By turns comic and sentimental, the novel''s popularity owes much to its recognizable depiction of domestic life and loving family relationships.Regarded by some as a straightforward and well-intentioned novel of sentiment, and by others as a satire on the very literary conventions and morality it seems to embody, The Vicar of Wakefield contains, in the figure of the vicar himself, one of the most harmlessly simply and unsophisticated yet also ironically complex narrators ever to appear in English fiction. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Read more less

Book SynopsisChristopher Marlowe (1564-93) was an English playwright and poet, who through his establishment of blank verse as a medium for drama did much to free the Elizabethan theatre from the constraints of the medieval and Tudor dramatic tradition. His first play Tamburlaine the Great, was performed that same year, probably by the Admiral's Men with Edward Alleyn in the lead. With its swaggering power-hungry title character and gorgeous verse the play proved to be enormously popular; Marlowe quickly wrote a second part, which may have been produced later that year. Marlowe's most famous play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, based on the medieval German legend of the scholar who sold his soul to the devil, was probably written and produced by 1590, although it was not published until 1604. Historically the play is important for utilizing the soliloquy as an aid to character analysis and development. The Jew of Malta (c. 1590) has another unscrupulous aspiring

Read more less

Book SynopsisNow issued for the first time in paperback with a new introduction by the author, this is a study of those narratives which were written and widely read in England during the first forty years of the eighteenth century, but which have been hitherto neglected or despised by historians of the novel. The author makes no claims for these works as literary achievements. They are seen, rather, as vigorous and highly successful commercial exploitations of enduring stereotypes such as the criminal, the traveller-merchant, the persecuted maiden, and the aristocratic seducer. Placing them against the background of the age, the book sets out to account for the attractiveness of such figures and their characteristic adventures, and to evaluate the importance of these narratives in providing a set of conventional and meaningful characters and situations for the mid-eighteenth century masters of the novel such as Richardson and Fielding.Trade Review`excellent and intelligent book' Times Literary Supplement`a real book, a good book. He is thoughtful and he makes you think. He sees the inherent triviality of his material, but sees in this a far from trivial question, "What is the use of bad art?" To raise the question at all is to give the book substance. It tells us that the material is going to be handled intelligently.' Review of English StudiesTable of ContentsThe rise of the novel reconsidered; rogues and whores - heroes and anti-heroes; travellers, priates and pilgrims - the pirate, Faustian ruffian, Crusoe and after; "as long as Atalantis shall be read" - the scandal chronicles of Mrs Manley and Mrs Haywood; Mrs haywood and the Novella - the erotic and the pathetic; the novel as pious polemic - Mrs Aubin and Mrs Barker, Mrs Elizabeth Rowe; the relevance of the unreadable.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDuring the middle years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the number of books published with titles that described themselves as flowers, gardens, or forests more than tripled. During those same years, English printers turned out scores of instructional manuals on gardening and husbandry, retailing useful knowledge to a growing class of literate landowners and pleasure gardeners. Both trends, Jessica Rosenberg shows, reflected a distinctive style of early modern plant-thinking, one that understood both plants and poems as composites of small pieces—slips or seeds to be recirculated by readers and planters. Botanical Poetics brings together studies of ecology, science, literary form, and the material text to explore how these developments transformed early modern conceptions of nature, poetic language, and the printed book. Drawing on little-studied titles in horticulture and popular print alongside poetry by Shakespeare, Spenser, and others, Rosenberg reveals how early modern print used a botanical idiom to anticipate histories of its own reading and reception, whether through replanting, uprooting, or fantasies of common property and proliferation. While our conventional narratives of English literary culture in this period see reading as an increasingly private practice, and literary production as more and more of an authorial domain, Botanical Poetics uncovers an alternate tradition: of commonplaces and common ground, of slips of herbs and poetry circulated, shared, and multiplied.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn in-depth look into the life of Romantic essayist Charles Lamb and the legacy of his workTrade Review“Eric G. Wilson’s excellent Dream-Child, the first full-length biography since [E. V.] Lucas’s in 1905, marks an important staging post on [Lamb’s] road back to respectability.”—Clare Bucknell, New York Review of BooksNamed by the New Yorker as a Best Book of 2022“[An] electrifying portrait of Charles Lamb.”—New Yorker“A literary life in the fullest sense . . . this biography is alive all over . . . a huge and eloquent book.”—Australian Book Review“A narrative rich in complexity and nuance. . . . One of the strengths of Wilson’s work is that he makes Lamb unfamiliar, as he constantly recurs to the unstable explorations of authorship and identity that run through Lamb’s work. . . . [Wilson] is a superb reader of Lamb. . . . Dream-Child brings Lamb’s mind alive through his own words and is at its best when it cleaves closely to Lamb’s writing.”—Daisy Hay, Times Literary Supplement“[Wilson] pins Lamb down by becoming Lamb-like himself. His biography is important because it is written in this spirit of becoming; it goes therefore a little headlong, almost beyond the genre; and it urges us, in sum, to explore for ourselves the twilit streets of the London of Lamb’s spirit, bedimmed with the dark shapes of sanity, and the softer shadows of insanity that stalk his peculiar but enduring genius.”—Adam Neikirk, Review 19“Needle by needle, point by point, Wilson uncovers the social scaffolding of Lamb’s literary genius.”—Madoc Cairns, The Tablet“While this book is based on rigorous scholarship, it does not assume extensive prior knowledge. Instead, it serves as a good introduction for non-specialists and will hopefully encourage more to seek out Lamb’s works. . . . For all his subject’s evasiveness, Wilson helps us see behind the mask, capturing Lamb’s authentic and somewhat tortured character.”—Edward Weech, Literary Review“An engagingly detailed investigation of Charles Lamb’s remarkable life.”—Mark Jones, Albion Magazine “Wilson combines shrewd analysis with original insights and discoveries to provide a valuable addition to the existing corpus of Lamb criticism.”—Duncan Wu, Georgetown University“A highly evocative and deeply informed life—the first for a century—of one of the most complex and sympathetic literary personalities of his time and one of the greatest English essayists of any age.”—Seamus Perry, University of Oxford“We have waited a long time for the definitive full-scale scholarly biography of Charles Lamb—master of the witty and winding essay—but now it has arrived. Eric Wilson’s Dream-Child is not only a labor of love for a lovable figure, but also a vivid and skillful placing of Lamb in the context of Romanticism and early nineteenth-century London life.”—Sir Jonathan Bate, author of Radical Wordsworth

Read more less

Book SynopsisOne of the key foundation books of the English Reformation, The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528) makes a radical challenge to the established order of the all-powerful Church of its time. Himself a priest, Tyndale boldly claims that there is just one social structure created by God to which all must be obedient, without the intervention of the rule of the Pope. He argues that Christians cannot be saved simply by performing ceremonies or by hearing the Scriptures in Latin, which most could not understand, and that all should have access to the Bible in their own language - an idea that was then both bold and dangerous. Powerful in thought and theological learning, this is a landmark in religious and political thinking.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA book on the experience of reading Shakespeare's 'dark plays' which 'often begin with lives falling apart: an event--shipwreck, exile, doubt, or unexpected love--derails what had seemed secure. Those who participate in the plays, as players, audience members, or readers, are invited to see in those events the vulnerability of their own lives.Table of ContentsPrologue: A Tale of Two Families Vulnerable Reading The Unravelling The Refuge of Second Selves The Lost, the Mad, and the Image of Horror Reconciliations Living With an Unpromised End How King Lear Helps Tragic Sharing Coda: In Place of the Jig

Read more less

Book SynopsisNo Hamlets is the first critical account of the role of Shakespeare in the intellectual tradition of the political right in Germany from the founding of the Empire in 1871 to the ''Bonn Republic'' of the Cold War era. In this sustained study, Andreas Höfele begins with Friedrich Nietzsche and follows the rightist engagement with Shakespeare to the poet Stefan George and his circle, including Ernst Kantorowicz, and the literary efforts of the young Joseph Goebbels during the Weimar Republic, continuing with the Shakespeare debate in the Third Reich and its aftermath in the controversy over ''inner emigration'' and concluding with Carl Schmitt''s Shakespeare writings of the 1950s. Central to this enquiry is the identification of Germany and, more specifically, German intellectuals with Hamlet. The special relationship of Germany with Shakespeare found highly personal and at the same time highIy political expression in this recurring identification, and in its denial. But Hamlet is not the only Shakespearean character with strong appeal: Carl Schmitt''s largely still unpublished diaries of the 1920s reveal an obsessive engagement with Othello which has never before been examined. Interest in German philosophy and political thought has increased in recent Shakespeare studies. No Hamlets brings historical depth to this international discussion. Illuminating the constellations that shaped and were shaped by specific appropriations of Shakespeare, Höfele shows how individual engagements with Shakespeare and a whole strand of Shakespeare reception were embedded in German history from the 1870s to the 1950s and eventually 1989, the year of German reunification.Trade ReviewIn taking this long view, Höfele rectifies any misconceptions we might have that 'right-wing Shakespeare' is purely a phenomenon of the Second World War, and in doing so he sheds fascinating light on less familiar aspects of German history in relation to right-wing politics and ideals and Shakespeare's role within these ... The position of Shakespeare comes full circle, from serving anti-democratic, racist, and fundamentalist causes, only to re-emerge as a powerful force in the midst of liberating and forward-thinking voices. Shakespeare, Hamlet, and to some extent Othello, thus become the keys to understanding German history, psyche, and identity in this powerful study. Höfele's work has all the potential to become an instant classic, a standard work for academics and teachers alike. * Alessandra Bassey, Modern Language Review *I cannot remember reading so compelling, important, and revelatory a Shakespeare book as this one ... This is a wonderfully, indeed movingly well-written book but the quality which particularly singles out No Hamlets is its intellectual and moral honesty. * Shakespeare Jahrbuch *Höfele tells a remarkable story about the way Shakespeare provides imaginative resources for some of the most challenging and troubling thought of the modern era ... also very much engaged with current conversations in early modern studies. * Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations A Note on Texts and Translations Introduction 1: Highest Formula: Nietzsche's Shakespeare 2: Shakespeare in the Master's Circle: Stefan George and the 'Secret Germany' 3: In the Master's Circle (II): Ernst Kantorowicz 4: Millions of Ghosts: Weimar Hamlets and the Sorrows of Young Goebbels 5: Little Otto: Carl Schmitt and the Moor of Venice 6: Third Reich Shakespeare 7: 'But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue': Hamlet in Inner Emigration 8: Hamlet in Plettenberg: Carl Schmitt and the Intrusion of the Time 9: Epilogue: Welcome to the Machine. Berlin 1989 Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis edition includes all of the known surviving writings of the poet Phillis Wheatley Peters (1753-1784), several of which have been discovered since the last attempt at a complete edition in 2001. The poems and the extant prose writings are accompanied by an Introduction to her life and times, and textual and explanatory notes.Trade ReviewVincent Carretta's edition will be essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Wheatley Peters's life and work... The vanishing point of [Wheatley Peters's] work stands at the far side of the history of enslavement. Given that the poems do exist, the critical imperative is to think carefully about how, and under what conditions, they came to be. Carretta makes a crucial contribution to this project. * Andrea Haslanger, Eighteenth - Century Fiction *This text leaves no stone unturned to provide a clear path for teaching the Wheatley corpus with the added benefit of drawing new and contemporary allusions to the study of "racism, sexism, and slavery", as "issues" that the early Black American poet "subtly and indirectly confronts"... Clearly, Writings is soon to become a standard for early American literature courses and one of the most practical, convenient, and useful classroom tools. * April Langley, University of Missouri-Columbia, Early American Literature *This edition, prepared by the outstanding scholar in the field, supersedes previous collections from Julian D. Mason (1966; 1989), John C. Shields (1988) and Carretta himself (Penguin, 2001). It is the fullest in scope, with abundant bibliographical detail, and it takes advantage of the steady growth in secondary literature... the most generally informative and revealing edition that has ever appeared. * Pat Rogers, Author of The Poet and the Publisher: The Case of Alexander Pope, Esq., of Twickenham versus Edmund Curll, Bookseller in Grub Street, Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Editorial Note Note on Money The Writings of Phillis Wheatley Textual and Explanatory Notes Index of First Lines of Titles of Phillis Wheatley's Poems Index of First Lines of Phillis Wheatley's Poems General Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisMilton in Translation represents an unprecedented collaboration that demonstrates the breadth of John Milton''s international reception, from the seventeenth century through today. This book collects in one volume new essays written on the translation of Milton''s works written by an international roster of experts: stalwart and career-long Miltonists, scholars primarily of translation studies, and practitioners who have translated Milton''s works. Chapters are grouped geographically but also, by and large, chronologically, given that Milton''s works radiated further abroad over time. The chapters on the twenty-three individual languages showcased in this volume are framed by ''Part I: Approaches'', consisting of an introduction and two major essays on the global reach and the aural nature of Milton''s poetry, and by an epilogue. ''Part II: Influential Translations'' features the most influential languages in translations of Milton''s works (English, Latin, German, French). Then, accouTrade ReviewWinner of the Milton Society of America's Irene Samuel Memorial Award (2017)[Milton in Translation] is important for bringing to notice the existence of over 300 translations of Milton into ?fty-seven languages, and the fact that there have been more such translations in the last thirty years than the preceding 300. It is fascinating to read, across a number of essays, of Milton's appropriation as a revolutionary in, for example, the Protestant colonies of North America (Thomas N. Corns), the Catholic colonies of postindependence Latin America (Mario Murgia), and in both Maoist and contemporary China (Bing Yan). * Catherine Bates, Studies in English Literature *What Angelica Duran, Islam Issa, and Jonathan R. Olson have put together for Milton in Translation proves that translation continues to serve an important role in the interpretation of literature. Duran, Issa, and Olson also make an important contribution to Milton studies, despite the exhaustive corpus of literary studies devoted to John Milton's work ... Overall, the editors and contributors provide an engaging look at Milton studies through translation studies and a text that will appeal to scholars and students in both areas. * William John Silverman Jr., Renaissance Quarterly *The volume creates an impressive panopticon of the diversity of target-language-specific reformulations of Milton's epic vision ... this [is a] marvelous insightful, and truly pioneering volume. * Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Milton Quarterly *[Milton] would have approved of Milton in Translation...In total, twenty-three languages are represented in this fascinating volume, including Chinese, Korean, Bulgarian, Czech, Serbo-Croatian and the Finno-Ugric languages. * Neil Forsyth, Times Literary Supplement *Winner of the Milton Society of America's Irene Samuel Memorial Award (2017)Fifty years ago, William Riley Parker opined that 'A good book on the translating of Milton into other languages (and his influence on other literatures) is long overdue.' Here is that book, appearing close to the 350th anniversary of the first appearance of Paradise Lost. * John Hale, Translation and Literature *Milton in Translation (2017) offers an expansive and novel study of the global reach of John Milton through translations into twenty-three languages, bringing together a wealth of knowledge by a wide variety of specialists in their respective fields. Ranging from western Europe to Asia and the Americas, the volume strives to be as inclusive as possible. Given the rising interest in the combined approach of translation and literary studies, this volume demonstrates the potential fruitfulness of such research in both a historical and a more contemporary context. * Rena Bood, H-Nationalism *This is an important collection of essays on the wide range of translations that have been made of Milton's works, encompassing several centuries of publication...The sheer number of translations that the collection manages to catalogue is breathtaking, ranging over the major European languages, through Latin and Hebrew, as well as noting cultural reception from South America to Asia...one can imagine Milton would have approved of the demonstration of this global engagement with his work. * Esther van Raamsdonk, The Modern Language Review *Table of ContentsPart I Approaches 1: Angelica Duran and Islam Issa: Introduction: From 'Cambalu' to 'El Dorado' 2: Thomas N. Corns: Milton's Global Reach 3: Beverley Sherry: Lost and Regained in Translation: The Sound of Paradise Lost Part II Influential Translations 4: Aaron Shapiro: 'Levelling the Sublime': Translating Paradise Lost into English in the Eighteenth Century 5: Estelle Haan: 'Translated Verse': Milton's Latin Poetry in the Long Eighteenth Century 6: Estelle Haan: 'Latinizing' Milton: Paradise Lost, Latinitas, and the Long Eighteenth Century 7: Curtis Whitaker: Domesticating and Foreignizing the Sublime: Paradise Lost in German 8: Christophe Tournu: 'The French Connection' among French Translations of Milton and within du Bocage's Paradis terrestre Part III Western European and Latin American Translations 9: Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen: Paradise Lost in Dutch, 1728-2003: Form, Politics, Religion 10: Anne Lange: A Vision in Times of Need: Milton in Estonia 11: David Robertson: Traces of the Birth of the State of Finland in Jylhä's Translation of Paradise Lost 12: Ástráður Eysteinsson: Iceland's Milton: On Jón Þorláksson's Translation of Paradise Lost 13: Daniele Borgogni: 'Censur'd to Be Much Inferiour': Paradise Lost and Regained in Italian 14: Hélio J.S. Alves: Milton in Portuguese: A Story in Blank Verse 15: Angelica Duran: Paradise Lost in Spanish Translation and as World Literature 16: Mario Murgia: Either in Prose or Rhyme: Translating Milton in(to) Latin America Part IV Central and Eastern European Translations 17: Alexander Shurbanov: The Quest for the Right Accent: Milton in Bulgarian Translation 18: %SárkaTobrmanová: Jungmann's Translation of Paradise Lost in the Vanguard of Modern Czech Culture 19: Miklós Péti: In 'Milton's Prison': Milton in Hungarian Translation 20: Joanna Rzepa: Translation as Resistance: Three Centuries of Paradise Lost in Polish 21: Marjan Strojan: Milton in Serbian/Montenegrin: Paradise Lost from behind Bars 22: Marjan Strojan: Milton in Illyria Part V Middle Eastern Translations 23: Islam Issa: Paradise Lost in Arabic: Images, Style, and Technique 24: Noam Reisner: Pre-Eminent among Gentiles: Milton's Major Poetry in Hebrew Translations 25: Jeffrey Einboden: Plotting a Persian Paradise: Milton's Iranian Afterlives Part VI East Asian Translations 26: Bing Yan: Milton in China 'Yet Once More' 27: Hiroko Sano: Translating Milton's Poetry into Japanese with a Case Study of Samson Agonistes 28: Kim Hae Yeon with Angelica Duran: The 1960s and Paradise Lost in Korean Gordon Campbell: Epilogue: Multilingual and Multicultural Milton

Read more less

Book SynopsisMacbeth before Shakespeare is a history of the medieval King Macbeth and his legend that was the basis for William Shakespeare's Tragedie of Macbeth. It traces the life of the real man and his important innovations, while showing how different legends were created in subsequent eras.Trade ReviewBenjamin Hudson's Macbeth before Shakespeare is a very entertaining and educating read. It succeeds very well in bringing out the man behind the myth, as well as explaining how the man became the myth. Hudson is a master of all the materials and languages required for the job, and he knows the history of Ireland and Britain around the year 1000 intimately. * Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, National University of Ireland, Galway *Here at last we have a solid and detailed account of the historical Macbeth. Ben Hudson is the historian of Celtic Scotland in the central Middle Ages, and he provides us with a readable narrative of the origins of the kingdom of the Scots and Macbeth's role as one of its most energetic and effective kings prior to Scotland's vassalage to their Anglo-Norman neighbor to the south. We see here the process by which Shakespeare inherited the history and legends surrounding Macbeth and the 'three weird sisters,' how Scots were generally perceived in Tudor England, and whether or not there could have been surviving children of Macbeth and his Lady. This is a meticulously constructed history of Scots, Viking, and English relations in the tumultuous eleventh century and a fascinating glimpse into how this particular Scottish monarch—called by one contemporary poet 'the red king'—made his way onto the Elizabethan stage. * Christopher A. Snyder, author of The Britons *This fascinating examination is an important contribution to medieval and early modern Scottish and British history, literature, folklore, and drama. Combining an unrivalled mastery of a complex array of sources with expert use of multiple methodologies, Benjamin Hudson deftly unveils the story of one of Scotland's most enigmatic figures across half a millennium as he explores the evolution of Macbeth from an historical, eleventh-century ruler of Scotland to the infamous Shakespearean literary villain of five-and-a-half centuries later. * R. Andrew McDonald, Brock University *Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. * Choice *Table of ContentsNote on Methodology List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: A Man and a Legend Chapter 1: Macbeth: Place and Past Chapter 2: Macbeth Emerges Chapter 3: King of All the Scots Chapter 4: Fame and Defamation Chapter 5: Not the Beginning of the Legend Chapter 6: Weird Sisters and the Prior of Loch Leven Chapter 7: Macbeth and Renaissance Scotland Chapter 8: The Scot in Tudor England Chapter 9: Macbeth before Shakespeare Conclusion Appendix 1: Children of Macbeth Appendix 2: Andrew of Wyntoun's Macbeth Episode: A Translation Notes Index

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisPassion and Action explores the place of the emotions in seventeenth-century understandings of the body and mind, and the role they were held to play in reasoning and action. Interest in the passions pervaded all areas of philosophical enquiry, and was central to the theories of many major figures, including Hobbes, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Pascal, and Locke. Yet little attention has been paid to this topic in studies of early modern thought. Susan James surveys the inheritance of ancient and medieval doctrines about the passions, then shows how these were incorporated into new philosophical theories in the course of the seventeenth century. She examines the relation of the emotions to will, knowledge, understanding, desire, and power, offering fresh analyses and interpretations of a broad range of texts by little-known writers as well as canonical figures, and establishing that a full understanding of these authors must take account of their discussions of our affective life. Trade ReviewWhen philosophers write about the importance of the emotions today, they usually begin by condemning earlier philosophers for separating the emotions from reason (and then all but ignoring them). Nothing could be further from the approach of Susan James ... in this beautifully written study. Her subtle and erudite interpretations of major texts of the seventeenth century show that the passions were at the heart of early modern philosophy ... her recovery of the treatment of the passions and of action in a wealth of authors from Descartes to Locke provides a perspective from which we can free ourselves a little from the unsatisfactory way we view the emotions today, and so enables us to think differently about their proper place in a sound human life. Her study also shows how early modern philosophers were open to and deeply influenced by areas of European culture other than philosophy where the emotions were at centre stage. * James Tully, Common Knowledge *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book explores how recollections and traces of the reign of Richard III survived a century and more to influence the world and work of William Shakespeare. In Richard III, Shakespeare depicts an era that had only recently passed beyond the horizon of living memory. The years between Shakespeare''s birth in 1564 and the composition of the play in the early 1590s would have seen the deaths of the last witnesses to Richard''s reign. Yet even after the extinction of memory, traces of the Yorkist era abounded in Elizabethan England - traces in the forms of material artefacts and buildings, popular traditions, textual records, and administrative and religious institutions and practices. Other traces had notoriously disappeared, not least the bodies of the princes reputedly murdered in the Tower, and the King''s own body, which remained lost until its dramatic rediscovery in the summer of 2012. Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III charts the often complex careers of these pieces of Trade Reviewa nuanced and well-written study ... I would recommend this fascinating, engaging book to those interested in Shakespeare's drama, the reception history of Richard III, early modern collective memory, or sixteenth- and seventeenth-century attitudes towards the recent English past. * Chloe Kathleen Preedy, Renaissance Studies *At a time when historicism as a method is frequently critiqued as an outmoded and limiting mode of literary scholarship, Schwyzer's study wonderfully achieves its goal of making readers 'think more deeply about what it means to set and see a work of art within its historical context'. Its concept of history is fluid and dynamic and its attention to both historical detail and textual nuance is exemplary. * Ian Frederick Moulton, Literature and History *an excellent study in how his reputation was formed during the Tudor era. It is well written and contains several useful illustrations. * Matthew Ward, The Ricardian *entrancing * Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Review of English Studies *Table of Contents1. 'Where is Plantagenet?' ; 2. Lees and Moonshine: Memory and Oral Tradition ; 3. Trophies, Relics, and Props: The Life Histories of Objects ; 4. 'He lived wickedly, yet made good laws': Institutions and Practices ; 5. 'Every tale condemns me for a villain': Stories ; 6. Now

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis wide-ranging and entertaining book explores blank space from incunabula to Google books. Blanks are a paradox--simultaneously nothing and something, gesturing to what was once there or might be there. They are also a creative opportunity for readers as well as writers: readers respond to what is not there and writers come to anticipate that response. Thus, blank space develops literary and ludic applications. Each chapter focuses on one typographical form of what is not there on the page: physical gaps (Chapter One), marks of incompletion such as &c (Chapter Two), and the asterisk as a stand-in for things that cannot be said (Chapter Three). By looking at the early-modern page as a visual unit as well as a verbal unit, this volume shows how the relationship between textual layout and textual content is as productive for writers as it is for readers. Mise-en-page influences readers in the same way that rhetoric influences readers. It is thus possible to speak of ''the rhetoric of the page''.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: 'This page intentionally left blank'; or, the apophatic page 2: Et cetera / etcetera / &c; or, the aposiopetic page 3: The asterisk; or, the gnomic page Epilogue Works Cited

Read more less

Book SynopsisThomas Middleton (1580-1627) was a writer of great versatility, and his career as a London dramatist spans the most productive, innovative, and exciting period of theatrical activity in the history of English drama. Best known for his tragedies, he also wrote many successful comedies of city life. This volume brings together the greatest among them: A Mad World, My Masters, Michaelmas Term, A Trick to Catch the Old One, and No Wit, No Help Like a Woman''s. The first three plays, written between 1604 and 1606, are witty and rambunctious satires on the predatory life of the aspiring London citizen. Sex and money are the characters'' obsessions; their caustic exposure Middleton''s. In the later play, No Wit (1612), satire shades into romance, prose into verse. Together the four plays reveal the range and exuberance of Middleton''s writing for the comic stage. Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner of the University of York, the plays have been newly edited and are presented witTable of ContentsA Mad World, My Masters ; Michaelmas Term ; A Trick to Catch the Old One ; No Wit, No Help Like a Woman's

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe five plays in this collection are Everyman in his Humour, the tragedy Sejanus, Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. They represent the full range and complexity of Jonson's art as a playwright. The text is the modernized version of Herford and Simpson's edition (OUP 1925-52), with full annotation.Table of ContentsEveryman in His Humour ; Sejanus ; Volpone ; The Alchemist ; Bartholomew Fair

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis text traces the emergence of a post-absolutist culture in France across a range of works and genres including: Saint-Simon's memoirs of Louis XIV and the Regency; Voltaire's first tragedy, Oedipe; Watteau's last great painting, L'Enseigne de Gersaint; and the plays of Marivaux.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction 1. A Post-Absolutist Subject: Saint-Simon 2. "Le Poète Roy": Voltaire's Oedipe 3. The King's Insignia: Watteau, L'Enseigne de Gersaint 4. Love and Speculation: Marivaux 5. Drawing Kings: Casanova and Voltaire Conclusion Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisUses the enormous popularity of Samuel Johnson to understand a singular case of author love and to reflect upon what the love of authors has to do with the love of literature. This book is for students of English literature and literary scholars keenly interested in canon formation.Trade Review"A brilliant work about a high canonical figure whose mind and body inspire passions that are at once exemplary and peculiar. Deutsch's study is as much about Johnson - as a writer, an institution, and a national figure - as it is about ourselves and our intense and sometimes rather bizarre investments in him. This is an original and important book." - Claudia L. Johnson, Princeton University"

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow did the public expression of feeling become central to political culture in England and the United States? This revisionist account of a much expanded Age of Sensibility traces the evolution of the politics of emotion on both sides of the Atlantic, from the late-17th to early-19th century.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Someday Bridges May Have Feelings Too Chapter 1: Conspiracy, Sensibility, and the Stoic Chapter 2: Cato's Tears Chapter 3: The Deathbed of the Just Chapter 4: Female Authorship, Public Fancy Chapter 5: Vagrant Races Chapter 6: Walkers, Stalkers, Captives, Slaves Conclusion: Liberal Guilt and Libertarian Revival Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis work explores Shakespeare's deep fascination with dangerous and disorderly forms of speaking - especially rumour, slander, insult, vituperation and curse - and through them offers a vision of the work of words in his plays.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTaking into account Blake's unique brand of literary and artistic production, Makdisi challenges the idea that to understand Blake one must assimilate him within the radical struggle against the order of the old regime.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFor Dante and Petrarch, posthumous love was a powerful conviction. Exploring the boundaries that Renaissance English poets drew between earthly and heavenly existence, this book seeks to understand this shift and its consequences for English poetry.Trade Review"Posthumous Love sets out a compelling case about a large and important point about English Renaissance love literature-one that perhaps should have been obvious for a long time but has never been brought into such sharp focus. The material may be familiar, but Targoff's treatment is genuinely fresh, and her well-researched book traces a clear narrative arc from Petrarch to the carpe diem poems of the seventeenth century, with nuanced assertions about the sonneteers of the 1590s, the poetry of Donne, and Shakespeare in between." (Gordon Braden, University of Virginia)"

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis work builds an argument about liberalism and the realist movement by shifting the focus from the rise of both in the 18th century, to their breakdown at the end of the 19th century. The decline of realism and the eroding logic of liberalism is related to the question of Jewish characters.

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamines spaces of inner life in eighteenth-century England to shed new light on interiority in literature and visual and material culture. In what kinds of spaces do we become most aware of the thoughts in our own heads? In My Dark Room, Julie Park explores places of solitude and enclosure that gave eighteenth-century subjects closer access to their inner worlds: grottos, writing closets, landscape follies, and the camera obscura, that beguiling dark room inside which the outside world in all its motion and color is projected. The camera obscura and its dreamlike projections within it served as a paradigm for the everyday spaces, whether in built environments or in imaginative writing, that generated the fleeting states of interiority eighteenth-century subjects were compelled to experience and inhabit. My Dark Room illuminates the spatial and physical dimensions of inner life in the long eighteenth century by synthesizingmaterial analyses of diverse media, from optical devices and landscape architecture to women's intimate dress, with close readings of literary texts not traditionally considered together, among them Andrew Marvell's country house poem Upon Appleton House, Margaret Cavendish's experimental epistolary work Sociable Letters, Alexander Pope's heroic verse epistle Eloisa to Abelard, and Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela. Park also analyzes letters and diaries, architectural plans, prints, drawings, paintings, and more, drawing our attention to the lively interactions between spaces and psyches in private environments. Park's innovative method of spatial formalism reveals how physical settings enable psychic interiors to achieve vitality in lives both real and imagined.Trade Review“A beautiful book on the privacies of writing, the rapt silences of the mind’s darkened room, lit by rays of the everyday: the habitations of thought that those before Proust conceived. My Dark Room answers to my sensibility; it teaches me who I am and where I come from, providing new coordinates and new darknesses between the points of light.” * Alexander Nemerov, author of 'The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s' *“My Dark Room explores the ways in which the camera obscura, both materially and conceptually, provided the corridor through which the interior lives of eighteenth-century subjects passed. In a dazzling sequence of chapters Julie Park captures the excitements and tensions that emerged as imaginative private worlds were projected on real geographies and spaces. My Dark Room will unsettle the now very long-standing assumptions about the primacy of fiction and the novel in the construction of eighteenth-century subjectivities, as it makes a compelling case for the subject in space created through interior projections.” * Peter de Bolla, University of Cambridge *“Park animates the camera obscura trope as a perceptual dynamic for which, until now, we've had so few words. She interweaves a material history of the camera obscura with several disciplines until it becomes possible to reenvision eighteenth-century literary fiction as a transhistorical and intermedial home for the psyche. My Dark Room opens interiors we once assumed were shut, unsettling familiar narratives about the post-Enlightenment mind. This lucidly dreamed study is a feat of the critical imagination to be experienced as well as read. It will be admired and referenced for years to come.” * Jayne Lewis, University of California, Irvine *"My Dark Room is a wonderful mix of discovery and analysis. With an impressive range of historical and philosophical contexts and delightful close readings of architectural and literary works, Park reveals the camera obscura modelling the spatial relationship between mind, landscape, and narrative." * Cynthia Wall, University of Virginia *"Park is a tireless scholar; she clearly loves what she's discovering spirited away in the archives, and her sense of wonder and delight can be contagious." * Book Post *“In a book that takes illumination and insight as its subject, [Park’s] meticulous close readings and case studies open up rich possibilities for future work.” * Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Country House: Making Storylines at Nun Appleton 2. Closet: Margaret Cavendish’s Writing Worlds 3. Grotto: Design and Projection in Alexander Pope’s Garden 4. Pocket: Pamela’s Mobile Settings and Spatial Forms 5. Folly: Fictions of Gothic Space in Eighteenth-Century Landscapes Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisJoseph Westlund brings recent developments in psychoanalytic thought to his elegant and sensitive readings of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, All's Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure. Westlund departs from the usual preoccupation in psychoanalytic criticism with conflict and guilt to rely instead on Melanie Klein's theory of reparation, which emphasizes the impulse in life to resolve and transcend conflict. Through interpretations that are new and convincing, Westlund views the interactions of characters in the six comedies as attempts to work through anger and guilt to effect reparations for themselves and for us.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first book-length study of Horace Walpole’s scandalous The Mysterious Mother, including critical essays, an abridged script, and a facsimile editionTrade Review“This handsome, erudite, and entertaining volume is in every way the perfect companion to Horace Walpole’s rarely recognized masterpiece.”—George E. Haggerty, University of California, Riverside“Every expert contribution to Staging ‘The Mysterious Mother,’ like every room of Horace Walpole’s Gothic Strawberry Hill, contains well-curated treasures.”—Joseph Roach, Yale University“This outstanding volume propels Horace Walpole’s Mysterious Mother out of the closet and onto the boards in illustrious fashion. Bringing the insights of brilliant scholars into conversation with both the shocking original and a masterfully cut text provides a daring provocation for us all to stage this ‘theatre of monstrous guilt.’”—Lisa A. Freeman, University of Illinois Chicago

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book brings together, for the first time, almost one hundred documents on her work, including contemporary reviews, letters, diary entries, the most important critical assessments, and several new pieces. The chapters that follow consist of chronologically arranged critical analyses of particular works by Radcliffe.Table of ContentsSeries Foreword by Cameron Northouse Acknowledgments Introduction Chronology The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789) A Sicilian Romance (1790) The Romance of the Forest (1791) The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 (1795) The Italian (1797) Gaston de Blondeville; St. Alban's Abbey (Posthumously, 1826) General Responses, 1789-1826 General Responses, 1827-1899 General Responses, The 20th Century Selected Additional Readings Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisCandide has been delighting readers since 1759 with its satiric wit, provocations and warnings.Trade Review"I have used this text in Western Civ courses many times. It is definitely the best and most accessible Candide available. The annotations are especially helpful to students (and to their professors)." -- Mark W. McLeod, Gonzaga University "The Norton Critical Edition of Candide is a teaching gem, with clear, unmistakable glosses, an accurate translation and just enough background and criticism for undergraduate study as well as graduate-level reference. This is an excellent start!" -- Frank E. Meek, Colorado Mountain College "An excellent translation with helpful footnote information and background information. And at a most affordable price for students." -- W. M. Howe, Blue Mountain Community College

Read more less