Literary studies: general Books

Book SynopsisProblem Plays'' has been an awkward category for those Shakespeare plays that don''t fit the conventional groupings. Expanding from the traditional three plays to six, the book argues that they share dramatic structures designed intentionally by Shakespeare to disturb his audience by frustrating their expectations.Trade Review"Because of its lucidity, clarity, and textually focused detail, the discussion is ideal for undergraduates, which is not to undervalue its scholarship . . . Margolies's insistence upon the importance of emotional response contributes usefully to a renewed critical interest in aesthetics and performance in early modern studies." - New Theatre Quarterly "Shakespeare's Irrational Endings offers an unparalleled history of both the concept and status of problem plays. As well as the traditional trio, Margolies includes Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello in the 'problem play' category. These six works, Margolies argues, are designed to unsettle and worry Shakespeare's audiences by offering them appropriate formal outcomes marriages or deaths without the expected emotional release." - Notes and QueriesTable of ContentsPreface Introduction All's Well That Ends Well Much Ado about Nothing Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice Troilus and Cressida Othello Conclusion Notes Index

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Book SynopsisReading is both a social process and a social formation, as this book illustrates across centuries and cultural contexts. Highlighting links evident in reading communities from literary salons to online environments, each essay reflects the rich repertoire of research methods available to reading scholars.Trade Review'This book makes an original and thought provoking contribution to scholarship in the history of reading, and highlights the ongoing research on reading groups taking place from a range of academic fields across the world. The editor's judicious selection of chapters demonstrates the disparate practices of readers in a range of social contexts, and powerfully reminds us that reading is as much a shared as an individual practice.' - Shafquat Towheed, Lecturer in English, the Open University, UKTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors An Introduction to Reading Communities: Processes and Formations; D.Rehberg Sedo Reading in an Epistolary Community in Eighteenth-Century England; B.Schellenberg Nineteenth Century Reading Groups in Britain and the Community of the Text: an Experiment with Little Dorrit ; J.Hartley Reading Across the Empire: the National Home Reading Union Abroad; R.Snape Utopian Civic-Mindedness: Robert Maynard Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, and the Great Books Enterprise; D.Born 'I Used to Read Anything that Caught My Eye, But…': Cultural Authority and Intermediaries in a Virtual Young Adult Book Club; D.Rehberg Sedo The Growth of Reading Groups as a Feminine Leisure Pursuit: Cultural Democracy or Dumbing Down?; A.Kiernan Speaking Subjects: Developing Identities in Book Groups; L.Howie Leading Questions: Interpretive Guidelines in Contemporary Popular Reading Culture; A.S.Ivy Marionettes and Puppeteers?: The Relationship between Book Club Readers and Publishers; D.Fuller , C.Squires & D.Rehberg Sedo Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisJohn Clare, Politics and Poetry challenges the traditional portrait of ''poor John Clare'', the helpless victim of personal and professional circumstance. Clare''s career has been presented as a disaster of editorial heavy-handedness, condescension, a poor market, and conservative patronage. Yet Clare was not a passive victim. This study explores the sources of the ''poor Clare'' tradition, and recovers Clare''s agency, revealing a writer fully engaged in his own professional life and in the social and political questions of the day.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Clare's 'Minorness' Viewing and Reviewing 'Grammar in Learning is like Tyranny in Government' 'The Cottager's Friend' 'Medlars' The Marketplace The Natural Histories of Helpstone Clare, Cobbett and 'Captain Swing' Epilogue: Clare's Agency Notes Index

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Book SynopsisAndrogyny in Modern Literature engages with the ways in which the trope of androgyny has shifted during the late nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. Alchemical, platonic, sexological, psychological and decadent representations of androgyny have provided writers with an icon which has been appropriated in diverse ways. This fascinating new study traces different revisions of the psycho-sexual, embodied, cultural and feminist fantasies and repudiations of this unstable but enduring trope across a broad range of writers from the fin de siècle to the present.Trade Review'...an insightful and stimulating read.' - Women: A Cultural ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction Classical to Medical Despised and Rejected Virginia Woolf The Second Wave Myra Breckinridge and The Passion of New Eve Alchemy and the Chymical Wedding Index

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Book SynopsisThis book combines London historiography, close reading, and recent theories of citizen subjectivity to demonstrate for the first time that Shakespeare's plays embody citizen and alien identities despite their aristocratic settings.Table of ContentsIntroduction Comedy: Civil Sayings History: Civil Butchery Tragedy: What Rome?

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Book SynopsisThis book redefines the plays and theatrical culture of the years 1625 to 1642 as something more than simply post-Shakespearean in character. Scholars reveal the drama's mixture of political engagement, urbane cosmopolitanism, and commercial ingenuity. They urge us to recalibrate our histories to account for the innovations of the Caroline period.Trade Review'This is a stimulating collection of essays on a period in dramatic history we know too little about. Each of the pieces here is driven by archival research that opens up new directions for inquiry. Because it challenges so much of what we assume about its subject, Localizing Caroline Drama will be indispensable for those interested in the early modern theater in England.' - Douglas Bruster, the University of Texas at Austin; author of Shakespeare and the Question of Culture 'I read this excellent collection with enormous pleasure. The editors have assembled a nice balance of contributors, representing a range of approaches, and the volume is filled with fascinating, fresh information and interpretations. Mining the neglected riches of Caroline drama, the contributors show us why we should return to these plays, seek out those we've never read, and scrap our tired generalizations about the period and its drama. The collection will inspire readers to teach these plays and to include them in their own research projects.' - Frances E. Dolan, the University of California, Davis Localizing Caroline Drama offers a genuinely interdisciplinary cultural history, providing not a single grand overarching reading that treats the Caroline period simply as the harbinger of catastrophe but a set of consciously local- that is, focused and engaged rather than simply topical- analyses which refuse to be reduced solely to their points of identity yet which together form a volume that is more a multiply-authored monograph than a collection of essays. This timely and groundbreaking book locates Caroline theatrical culture in a range of places and contexts never before given their due: from Dublin to Tunis, from printshop to dancing manual, from commerce to crusade. 'Decadent' no more, Caroline drama emerges as a series of vibrant interventions in contemporary culture - aesthetic, political, sexual, economic, theological - far outstripping the limitations of the 'pre-revolutionary.' ' - Gordon McMullan, Reader in English, King's College LondonTable of ContentsForeword; R. Malcolm Smuts Introduction; A. Zucker and A. B. Farmer Canons and Classics: Publishing Drama in Caroline England; A. B. Farmer and Z. Lesser Politics and Aesthetic Pleasure in 1630s Theater; K. E. McLuskie Reading Triumphs: Localizing Caroline Masques; L. Shohet Exeunt Fighting: Poets, Players, and Impresarios at the Caroline Hall Theaters; M. Butler The St. Werburgh Street Theater, Dublin; R. Dutton A Beast So Blurred: The Monstrous Favorite in Caroline Drama; M. DiGangi Dancing Masters and the Production of Cosmopolitan Bodies in Caroline Town Comedy; J. E. Howard The 'Turks', Caroline Politics, and Philip Massinger's The Renegado; B. S. Robinson

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Book SynopsisIn the decades immediately following the French Revolution, British writers saw the narrative ordering of experience as either superficial, dangerous or impossible. Linking storytelling to other forms of social action, including the making of contracts and promises, Gavin Edwards argues that the experience of radical social upheaval produced a widespread scepticism about narrative as linguistic artefact, the transmission of narrative through storytelling and the understanding of individual or collective life as a temporal sequence with a beginning and an end.Trade Review'This is a very scholarly volume.' Roger Sales - Literature and History 'Gavin Edwards has written a truly original book that should be read by scholars with an interest in narratology, in the relationships between language and politics, or in any of the authors Edwards discusses...This work demands intellectual exertion from the reader, but it amply rewards that effort.' Eric Birdsall, British Association for Romantic StudiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgements PART ONE Narrative Order Samuel Johnson and the Order of Time PART TWO Edmund Burke: Middles versus Beginnings and End Watkin Tench and the Cold Track of Narrative William Godwin: Stories and Families Wordsworth's Moving Accidents Crabbe's Parables Relations: Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley The Still Unravished Bride of Lammermoor Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRooted in the day-to-day experience of teaching and written for those without specialist technical knowledge, this is a new edition of the go-to guide to using digital tools and resources in the humanities classroom. In response to the rapidly changing nature of the field, this new edition has been updated throughout and now features:- A brand-new Preface accounting for new developments in the broader field of DH pedagogy- New chapters on ''Collaborating'' and on ''Teaching in a Digital Classroom'' - New sections on collaborating with other teachers; teaching students with learning differences; explaining the benefits of digital pedagogy to your students; and advising graduate students about the technologies they need to master- New ''advanced activities'' and advanced assignment' sections (including bots, vlogging, crowd-sourcing, digital storytelling, web scraping, critical making, automatic text generation, and digital media art)- Expanded chapter bibliographies and over two dozen tTrade ReviewThe new edition of Using Digital Humanities in the Classroom extends its already positive and beneficial role, at a time when our thinking about the issues it speaks to have increasing importance. Its new and revised materials continue to build on the first edition’s foundation: clear and accessible, learned and pragmatic, broad and deep - and, above all, extremely useful to all those teaching any aspect the digital humanities, new and experienced alike. -- Dr. Raymond Siemens, Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Victoria, CanadaThis unique book is a goldmine for humanities academics wanting to incorporate digital content into their teaching. In accessible, non-intimidating style, the book and its companion website take you by the hand and guide you through practicalities and logistics. Using it has revolutionised my undergraduate teaching. * Simone Murray, Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University, Australia *Table of ContentsUsing Digital Humanities in the Classroom, 2nd edition Proposed Table of Contents Preface i. Justification for second edition ii. New developments in the digital humanities Iii. Critical digital humanities Introduction i. Who is this book for? ii. What are the digital humanities? iii. Key concepts iv. How to use this book and Web Companion v. The Web Companion vi. Conclusion 1. Finding, Evaluating and Creating Digital Resources i. Why use digital texts (and other assets)? ii. Finding and evaluating digital resources iii. Creating digital resources for your students iv. Creating digital resources with your students v. A short guide to citation and copyright vi. Conclusion vii. Further reading 2. Ensuring Accessibility i. Universal design ii. Facilitating lectures iii. Promoting universal interactivity iv. Providing accessible resources v. Privacy, safety, and account management vi. Learning differences vii. Adapting policies for individual students and student bodies viii. Conclusion ix. Further reading 3. Designing Syllabi i. Course websites ii. A note on domains and web hosting iii. Online syllabi iv. Other digital resources for course websites v. Should you teach an introduction to DH course? vi. An alternative approach: Choosing your amount of DH vii. Anatomy of a syllabus I: Course information and learning objectives viii. Anatomy of a syllabus II: Course policies ix. Conclusion x. Further reading 4. Designing Classroom Activities i. Activities as exploration ii. Activity design: Balancing integration and flexibility iii. Ten-minute exercises iv. Half-hour exercises v. Whole-class exercises vi. Weeklong exercises vii. Writing effective prompts viii. Advanced activities ix. Conclusion x. Further reading 5. Managing Classroom Activities i. Working with existing or free resources ii. Many ways to secure equipment iii. Troubleshooting iv. In case of total failure v. Conclusion vi. Further reading 6. Creating Digital Assignments i. General principles for creating digital assignments ii. Common types of digital assignments iii. Writing effective assignment sheets iv. Advanced assignments v. Conclusion vi. Further reading 7. Evaluating Student Work i. The importance of explicit assessment criteria ii. Anatomy of a rubric iii. Competencies: A language for indicating success iv. Involving students in evaluation processes v. Thinking beyond the rubric vi. Coping with failure during assessment periods vii. Conclusion viii. Further reading 8. Teaching Graduate Students i. The role of technology in twenty-first-century graduate education ii. Graduate students versus undergraduate students iii. Incorporating DH into graduate course work iv. External opportunities v. Professionalization and the job market vi. A note on alt-ac careers vii. Conclusion viii. Further reading 10. Building Internal and External Support Communities i. A note on the variety of support systems ii. Internal Support iii. Social media iv. Grant funding v. Conclusion vi. Further reading 11. DH Beyond the Classroom i. Theories of collaboration ii. Impact, outreach, and the public humanities iii. Libraries iv. Museums and galleries v. Local governments vi. Non-profits and other NGOs vii. Participatory events viii. Conclusion viii. Further reading 12. Connecting to Your Research i. Counting more than once ii. Incorporating digital methods in your research iii. Producing research on digital pedagogy iv. Broadening the scope of your research v. Collaborating with students vi. Conclusion vii. Further reading Concluding Thoughts: Crafting Your DH Pedagogical Philosophy Index

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