Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

Book SynopsisDocuments the ongoing popularity of Roman comedies, and shows that they continued to be performed in the late Republic and early Imperial periods of Rome. Mathias Hanses traces the plays' reception, and shines a bright light on the relationships between comic texts and the works of contemporary and later Latin writers.Trade ReviewAn extremely ambitious undertaking on multiple fronts, the book promises to cast new light not only on the entire genre of Roman comedy itself but also on how virtually the entire corpus of late republican and early imperial Latin literature engaged with comic writing as a modello codice. It brilliantly accomplishes its goal." - Judith Hallett, University of Maryland

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Book SynopsisParticipants in the current debate regarding the literary canon generally separate the established literary order - of which Shakespeare is the most visible icon - from emerging minority literatures. This study insists that the two realms should be brought together.

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Book SynopsisCombines biography with social and cultural history to examine the lives of Frances Marion and the other women who shaped filmmaking from 1912 through the 1940s. Marion was Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter - male or female - for almost three decades and wrote almost 200 produced films.

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Book SynopsisExplores the emergence of Greek tragedy on the American stage from the nineteenth century to the present. This book shows how plays like Oedipus Rex and Medea have resonated deeply with contemporary concerns and controversies - over war, slavery, race, the status of women, religion, identity, and immigration.Trade Review"Obligatory reading for anyone interested in Greek tragedy, reception studies, the history of the theater, or US cultural history... Essential." -- P. Nieto, Brown University Choice "[A] monumental mosaic of a book." -- Oliver P. Foley The Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Introduction CHAPTER ONE. Greek Tragedy Finds an American Audience 1. Setting the Stage 2. American Theater Makes Greek Tragedy Its Own CHAPTER TWO. Making Total Theater in America: Choreography and Music 1. Hellenic Influences on the Development of American Modern Dance 2. American Gesamtkunstwerke 3. Musical Theater 4. Visual Choreography in Robert Wilson's Alcestis CHAPTER THREE. Democratizing Greek Tragedy 1. Antigone and Politics in the Nineteenth Century: The Boston 1890 Antigone 2. Performance Groups in the 1960s--1970s: Brecht's Antigone by The Living Theatre 3. The 1980s and Beyond: Peter Sellars's Persians, Ajax, and Children of Heracles 4. Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound in the United States: From the Threat of Apocalypse to Communal Reconciliation CHAPTER FOUR. Reenvisioning the Hero: American Oedipus 1. Oedipus as Scapegoat 2. Plagues 3. Theban Cycles 4. Deconstructing Fatality 5. Abandonment CHAPTER FIVE. Reimagining Medea as American Other 1. Setting the Stage: Nineteenth-Century Medea 2. Medea as Social Critic from the Mid-1930s to the Late 1940s 3. Medea as Ethnic Other from the 1970s to the Present 4. Medea's Divided Self: Drag and Cross-Dressed Performances Epilogue Appendix A. Professional Productions and New Versions of Sophocles' and Euripides' Electras Appendix B. Professional Productions and New Versions of Antigone Appendix C. Professional Productions and New Versions of Aeschylus's Persians, Sophocles' Ajax, and Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound Appendix D. Professional Productions and New Versions of Oedipus Tyrannus Appendix E. Professional Productions and New Versions of Euripides' Medea Appendix F. Professional Productions and New Versions of Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis and Iphigeneia in Tauris Appendix G. Other Professional Productions and New Versions Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

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Book SynopsisThis comprehensive anthology brings together a diverse collection of dramatic writing from the late fourteenth century to the onset of the Renaissance. The volume presents for the first time the key plays of the period in their entirety, alongside more unusual selections, covering religious narrative, religion and conscience, and politics and morality. The first section focuses on Biblical plays, including coherent sequences of the narrative Cycle plays from York and N-Town and supporting pageants from Chester and Wakefield. This approach allows a clear narrative line to develop, and permits the comparison of the treatment of key stories between the Cycles. The selected material demonstrates how the drama of the towns and cities of East Anglia and the North of England mediated religious culture to a heterodox urban audience, and explored biblical events in an intensely contemporary setting. In the second and third sections, the attention turns to secular drama, Trade Review"Walker offers a thoroughly researched and well-chosen selection of key primary texts and some unusual plays. He also provides short but comprehensive introductions that will be easily accessible to beginning students." Choice "A marvellous collection of dramatic texts from the late fourteenth century to the beginnings of the Renaissance in the British Isles. In this remarkably comprehensive collection we have the entire texts of the key plays of the period, including some less usual works. A few period illustrations, maps and a street plan help set the scene. The whole exemplary apparatus is worn lightly, all helping to encourage reading and acting. Glossaries of terms and notes sit unobtrusively at the foot of the page, immediately available to help the reader. He [Walker] specifically arranges his anthology to allow, and encourage, the plays to speak for themselves: wide-ranging selection, concise informative introduction to each work, notes and glossaries. In a single volume a whole range of rich literature is made accessible to the modern reader in what must be just about the star volume in an anyway excellent series. This book will be essential in any undergraduate or senior school collection of English literature, or of drama, and will enhance may other collections besides". Reference ReviewsTable of ContentsIntroduction vii Acknowledgements xi Chronological Table xii Places Mentioned in the Text xv The York Performance Sites xvi Part I Religious Narrative: The Biblical Plays 1 Introduction 3 York, The Ordo Paginarum 10 York (The Barkers/Tanners), The Fall of the Angels 12 Chester (The Tanners), The Fall of Lucifer 16 York (The Coopers), The Fall of Man 21 Chester (The Drapers), Adam and Eve 25 York (The Pewterers and Founders), Joseph’s Trouble About Mary 32 York (The Tilethatchers), The Nativity 38 Towneley, The Second Shepherds’ Play 42 Chester (The Paynters and Glaziers), The Shepherds 58 York (The Skinners), The Entry into Jerusalem 70 York (The Cutlers), The Conspiracy 80 York (The Bowers and Fletchers), Christ Before Annas and Caiaphas 89 York (The Tapiters and Couchers), Christ Before Pilate I: The Dream of Pilate’s Wife 99 York (The Litsters), Christ Before Herod 112 York (The Tilemakers), Christ Before Pilate II: The Judgement 123 York (The Pinners), The Crucifixion 134 York (The Saddlers), The Harrowing of Hell 143 York (The Carpenters), The Resurrection 150 York (The Mercers), The Last Judgement 159 The Mercers’ Indenture (1433) 159 The Last Judgement 160 N-Town, The Mary Play 167 The Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge (extracts) 196 Chester, The Post-Reformation Banns 201 Matthew Hutton’s Letter to the Mayor and Council of York (1567) 206 Part II Religion And Conscience: The Moral Plays 207 Introduction 209 Croxton, The Play of the Sacrament 213 Wisdom 235 Mankind 258 Everyman 281 Part III Politics And Morality: The Interludes 299 Introduction 301 Henry Medwall, Fulgens and Lucres 305 John Skelton, Magnyfycence 349 The Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester 409 John Heywood, The Four PP 433 John Heywood, The Play of the Weather 456 John Bale, Johan Baptystes Preachynge 480 John Bale, The Three Laws 493 Sir David Lindsay, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis 535 The Description of the 1540 Interlude 538 Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (the 1552–4 text) 541 Textual Variants 624 Glossary of Common Hard Words 627

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Book SynopsisThis Guide steers students through the critical writing on Shakespeare's tragedies from the sixteenth century to the present day. Guides students through four centuries of critical writing on Shakespeare's tragedies. Covers both significant early views and recent critical interventions. Substantial editorial material links the articles and places them in context. Annotated suggestions for further reading allow students to investigate further. Table of ContentsIntroduction. Part I: Criticism 1592-1904:. Part II: Twentieth-Century Criticism:. 1. Genre. Overview. 2. Dollimore, King Lear and Essential Humanism. Cavell, Coriolanus and Interpretations of Politics. Character. Overview. 3. Holland, The Resources of Characterisation in Othello. Leverena, The Woman in Hamlet: An Interpersonal View. Language. Overview. 4. Kermode, Anthony and Cleopatra. Evans, Imperfect Speakers. Gender and Sexuality. Overview. 5. Kahn, The Daughter’s Seduction in Titus Andronicus. Newman, Femininity and the Monstrous in Othello. History and Politics. Overview. 6. Kastan, Macbeth and the Name of King. Wilson, Is this a holiday? Shakespeare’s Roman Carnival. Texts. Overview. 7. Warren, Quarto and Folio King Lear. Marcus, Bad Taste and Bad Hamlet. Performance. Overview. 8. Cox, Titus Andronicus. Loehlin, Baz Luhrmann’s Millenial Shakespeare. Bibliography. Index.

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Book SynopsisBeginning in the 1830s, white actor Thomas Rice took to the stage as Jim Crow, and the ragged and charismatic trickster of black folklore entered—and forever transformed—American popular culture. Jump Jim Crow brings together for the first time the plays and songs performed in this guise and reveals how these texts code the complex use and abuse of blackness.Trade ReviewLhamon’s new Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture is a monumental labor of textual reconstruction matched by a long and extraordinary introduction. -- Robert Christgau * The Believer *Lhamon provides a superb follow-up to his outstanding Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop. This study focuses on the character of Jim Crow (a ‘cultural collage’) as evolved largely by actor Thomas D. Rice (1806–1860), before the meaning of the name became chiseled in stone… At the heart of the book are expertly and thoroughly edited texts of thirteen songs, nine plays (including the never-published Otello), and two street prose versions of Jim Crow’s life. These, along with illustrations and a perceptive, many-layered, and lengthy analytical introduction, make for the most complete offering of primary sources and criticism available to lead readers toward an understanding of these complex texts, their coding, and the controversial figure of Jim Crow. -- D. B. Wilmeth * Choice *In the developing field of Atlantic proletarian studies, and the associated study of minstrelsy and the minstrel stage, Jump Jim Crow is a milestone. Lhamon’s discovery of and scholarship upon the songs and plays is admirably painstaking and in many ways groundbreaking. He has made it easier to imagine this early stage of minstrelsy as a confluence of free-floating vernacular material with the local struggles among urban proto-classes; cliques, gangs, parties, and publics in the 1820s and ’30s. He has, in other words, built foundations under Constance Rourke’s intuition of sixty years ago that Jim Crow belongs with Crockett and Fink on the frontier—literally and figuratively—of the market revolution. Much of what has been theorized or imagined about the popular culture of the 1830s and ’40s from Rourke onwards emerges with new freshness and clarity in these texts, and some that has not yet been either theorized or imagined. -- Robert Cantwell, author of Bluegrass Breakdown and When We Were GoodScholars are belatedly coming to realize that minstrelsy is the source of much that we value in American vernacular music and much that we abhor in views that many white Americans have held and still hold toward African Americans. If we are to begin to understand either of these consuming issues, we must address minstrelsy. The topic is, in brief, of immense social, political, and cultural importance. Lhamon is the first to do full justice to the life, work, and politics of T. D. Rice, the most important early blackface minstrel, and his book is the first to collect in one resource extant plays and lyrics by Rice, many of which Lhamon has rediscovered. This book makes an important and impressive contribution to the field. -- Dale Cockrell, author of Demons of Disorder and Pasticcio and Temperance Plays in AmericaTable of ContentsPreface List of Illustrations Introduction: An Extravagant and Wheeling Stranger Lateral Sufficiency Gumbo Cuff and the New York Desdemonas Change the Joke and Slip the Stereotype The Phases of Jim Crow's Runaway Stage Songs "Coal Black Rose" "The Original Jim Crow" "Jim Crow, Still Alive!!!" "Dinah Crow" "Jim Crow" (London) "De Original Jim Crow" "Jim Crow" (Boston) "All de Women Shout Loo! Loo!" "Clare de Kitchen" "Gombo Chaff" "Sich a Gitting Up Stairs" "Jim Crack Corn, or the Blue Tail Fly" "Settin' on a Rail, or, Racoon Hunt" Plays Oh! Hush! or, The Virginny Cupids! Virginia Mummy Bone Squash Flight to America The Peacock and the Crow Jim Crow in His New Place The Foreign Prince Yankee Notes for English Circulation Otello Street Prose "Life of Jim Crow" "A Faithful Account of the Life of Jim Crow the American Negro Poet" Notes Acknowledgments Index

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Book SynopsisThe Annotated Importance of Being Earnest provides facing-page commentary on Oscar Wilde’s greatest play. Editor Nicholas Frankel highlights the play’s relation to the author’s homosexuality and to the climate of sexual repression that led to Wilde’s imprisonment just months after the play’s London opening in 1895.Trade Review[This] edition admirably achieves its stated aim to enlarge the understanding and pleasure of readers and students of Wilde’s most perfect, most studied, and most frequently performed play. -- John Sloan * The Wildean *Frankel’s command of all the relevant materials—textual, literary-critical, historical, biographical—is impressive, and he puts that knowledge to splendid use in The Annotated Importance of Being Earnest. -- Stephen Arata, University of VirginiaAn excellent edition with new insights and superb annotations that continues Frankel’s lively and important work on Wilde. -- Linda Peterson, Yale University

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Book SynopsisHumanist Tragedies offers a sampling of Latin drama from the Tre- and Quattrocento. These five tragedies—Ecerinis, Achilleis, Progne, Hyempsal, and Fernandus servatus—were nourished by a potent amalgam of classical, medieval, and pre-humanist sources. Humanist tragedy testifies to momentous changes in literary conventions during the Renaissance.

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Book SynopsisIn Four Cries of a Gibbon by the late-Ming dynasty playwright Xu Wei, characters move between life and death, and male and female, as they seek to articulate who they truly are. In this first critical study and annotated translation, Kwa considers how Wei's exploration of identity paved the way for further reflection in later fiction and drama.

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Book SynopsisChina’s sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw an unprecedented explosion in the production of woodblock-printed books. This volume considers what a wide range of late Ming books reveal about their readers’ ideas of a pleasurable private life, as well as their orientations toward early modernity and toward traditional Chinese sources of authority.Trade ReviewHome and the World brilliantly fills a large gap in the existing literature on Ming book culture. It builds on the insights of earlier works and proposes a finer analysis of what texts, in both their materiality and their contents, can reveal about reading tastes and practices in the late Ming. In its focus on a range of different texts and its close analysis of these texts and their illustrations (and their imagined readership), this exciting and beautifully researched work signals the growing sophistication of the study of Chinese book culture. -- Cynthia Brokaw, Brown UniversityHome and the World makes a tremendous contribution to current scholarly understandings of the rise of print culture and its rapid spread during the Ming period… It complements and brings to completion previous work in literature, art history (particularly book illustrations), the history of the book, theater history, and studies of popular culture by asking new and startlingly objective questions… By choosing a number of ostensibly dissimilar texts and by relentlessly combing contemporary texts for references to them, He reveals new sources of information, new avenues of interpretation, and truly new insights. -- Robert E. Hegel, Washington University in St. Louis

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Book SynopsisLove in the Age of War explores soldier characters that were at the center of many of Menander's plays. While later traditions turned these characters into clowns, Wilfred Major details how Menander portrayed the soldiers as challenging and complex men who struggle to find a place in society, and whose stories may resonate more powerfully today.

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Book SynopsisSmaro Nikolaidou-Arampatzi analyzes the direct and indirect evidence of Euripides’ fragmentary play, the Ino, and reexamines matters of reconstruction and interpretation. This work is a full-scale commentary on Euripides’ Ino, with a new arrangement of the fragments, an English translation in prose, and an extensive bibliography.

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Book SynopsisTamara T. Chin explores the politics of representation during the Han dynasty at a pivotal moment when China was asserting imperialist power on the Eurasian continent and expanding its local and long-distance (“Silk Road”) markets. Chin explains why rival political groups introduced new literary forms with which to represent these expanded markets.Trade ReviewEvery now and then, the collective scholarly consciousness is stirred up by a new book that makes unexpected connections among well-known ‘facts’ and thereby fundamentally changes the perception of an entire epoch. Tamara Chin’s Savage Exchange is such a book. -- Lothar von Falkenhausen * Journal of Chinese Studies *Tamara Chin vividly illuminates the imbrication of rhetorical idioms, literary styles, and theories of value that shaped the clash between moral philosophy and political economy at a defining moment in the construction of the Chinese empire. Savage Exchange initiates an immensely rewarding dialogue between literary analysis and economic history. -- Richard von Glahn, University of California, Los AngelesThis book offers an utterly refreshing look at the entanglement of the economic and literary in ancient Chinese writings about exotica, foreign markets, aesthetic extravagance, and border crossing in general. Tamara Chin’s masterful exegesis ranges across the Shiji, the Hanshu, the Guanzi, and fu-rhapsody to reveal an ancient world that is at once new yet surprisingly familiar in its anxieties about lavish expenditure, quantification, economic abstraction, strange idioms, accumulations of wealth and their moral implications. Savage Exchange is a brilliant contribution to classical scholarship, comparative literature, and comparative analyses of ancient economic thought. -- Lydia H. Liu, Columbia UniversitySavage Exchange is a major breakthrough in conceptualizing grounds of comparison between early Chinese texts and other literary traditions. By drawing attention to a range of texts often outside the purview of literary scholars, Tamara Chin rethinks the relationship between centers and margins in the Chinese tradition. How did knowledge of distant lands or other peoples shape literary imagination? How can we extend the concept of ‘text’ to material remains (such as coins)? By asking these and other absorbing questions, Chin reveals hidden connections between what at first sight appear to be disparate fields of knowledge. -- Wai-yee Li, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisRichard III, Troilus and Cressida, and Antony and Cleopatra were figures of intense signification long before Shakespeare gave them new life. When he did, Charnes argues, he used them to explore notorious identitya new kind of infamy based not on the moral and ethical use value of legend but on a commodification of identity itself.Trade ReviewAn impressive virtuoso performance on an important topic in Shakespearean cultural studies… The book’s strengths lie in its ability to conduct clever textual analyses…couched in skillfully maneuvered, diverse theoretical contexts;…its generally rich and sophisticated tissue of associate, interdisciplinary European post-modernist discourses…and popular culture topics;…and its occasional penetrating historical and cultural generalizations… This is a prodigious first attempt and it deserves praise for that reason. In subject and ambition, it should make for serious reading in post-modernist Shakespeare. -- Imtiaz Habib * South Carolina Review *A dazzling and challenging book. -- Catherine Belsey, University of Wales College of CardiffCharnes’s writing is witty, and the book as a whole is wonderfully fresh, not only in the originality of its analysis, but also in its irreverence toward received opinion. -- Michael D. Bristol, McGill UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Belaboring the Obvious Reading the Monstrous Body in King Richard 3 2. "So Unsecret to Ourselves" Notorious Identity and the Material Subject in Troilus and Cressida 3. Spies and Whispers Exceeding Reputation in Antony and Cleopatra Conclusion Epilogue Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTraces the uses of "Hamlet" in Arabic theatre and political rhetoric, and asks how Shakespeare's play developed into a musical with a happy ending in 1901 and grew to become the most obsessively quoted literary work in Arab politics today. This title identifies the French source of the earliest Arabic "Hamlet".Trade Review"Studying productions of Hamlet across the Arab world, including performances in Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria, Litvin draws broad parallels between the struggles of Shakespeare's protagonist and the frustrated political and cultural hopes of Arab intellectuals. Citing an interesting variety of sources--from videos and reviews to scripts and interviews--the author provides a new perspective on how Shakespearean drama has been appropriated in various international and political contexts."--Choice "An exceptional work that crosses many disciplinary boundaries, Margaret Litvin's Hamlet's Arab Journey not only provides a new approach to the study of international Shakespeare appropriation, but also promises an engaging and narrative-rich point of access to the operations of Arab cultural and political identities."--Lobna Ismail, Theatre Research International "Remarkable and deserving of particular mention, Margaret Litvin's monograph Hamlet's Arab Journey presents far-reaching and unexpected outcomes... Litvin's study, conducted with acumen and passion, uniquely emphasizes the potential impact of translating literature."--Federico Federici, Translation Studies "Hamlet's Arab Journey is an elegantly written, strongly argued book that would enrich courses in Arabic literature, cultural studies, and Middle East history."--Sonali Pahwa, International Journal of Middle East Studies "Reproductions of the revenge drama Hamlet in the Arab world, and the tragic plight of its famous protagonist Hamlet is meticulously followed by Margaret Litvin in her book Hamlet's Arab Journey, which benefits both the study of Arab theater and Shakespearean studies... Litvin eloquently presents an artistic journey of a text that was conceived some four hundred years ago in England and continues to travel around the globe in different garbs. From this point of view, her approach transcends the colonial/post-colonial or influencer/influenced relationships as she presents her subject matter with great caution."--Dina Amin, Journal of Arabic LiteratureTable of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi Note on Transliteration and Translation xvii Introduction 1 "When Shakespeare Travels Abroad" 3 The Global Kaleidoscope 6 Hamlet and Political Agency 8 Chapter 1: Hamlet in the Daily Discourse of Arab Identity 13 "Time Out of Joint": Coming to Terms with History 16 "Shall We Be or Not Be?": Personifying the Group 23 "Words, Words, Words": Forging an Identity 29 "The Play's the Thing" 33 Chapter 2: Nasser's Dramatic Imagination, 1952-64 35 Revolutionary Drama 37 Theatre Joins the Battle 44 Shakespeare on the Sidelines 50 Chapter 3: The Global Kaleidoscope: How Egyptians Got Their Hamlet, 1901-64 53 Beyond Caliban 54 "Bend Again toward France" 59 "Do It, England!" 70 Independence and Soviet Shakespeare 75 Bidayr's "Cruel Text" 85 Chapter 4: Hamletizing the Arab Muslim Hero, 1964-67 91 In Search of Social Justice 93 Psychological Interiority as a Ground for Political Agency 95 Sulayman: "Justice or Oppression? That Is the Puzzle" 95 Al-Hallaj: "Who Will Give Me a Seeing Sword?" 103 De-Hamletized Revivals 111 Chapter 5: Time Out of Joint, 1967-76 114 "Something Is Rotten": Theatre and the 1967 Defeat 116 M artyrs for Justice: "Abstract and Brief Chronicles" of the 1970s 124 Sadat's Open Door: "To Cook or Not to Cook?" 134 A Dilemma 140 Chapter 6: Six Plays in Search of a Protagonist, 1976-2002 142 Silencing Hamlet 144 "A Play Can't Stab" 147 "His Sword Kept Sticking Up" 163 A Prodigal Cousin 173 Post-Political Laughs 179 Epilogue: Hamlets without Hamlet 183 Notes 189 Bibliography 237 Index 257

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Book SynopsisDelving into the critical role of the theater in the origins of the novel of interiority, this title reinterprets the novel as a record of dissatisfaction with inwardness and an injunction to rethink human identity in radically collective and social terms.Trade ReviewCo-Winner of the 2013 Sonia Rudikoff Prize, Northeast Victorian Studies Association Shortlisted for the 2013 MSA Book Prize, Modernist Studies Association "Empty Houses is an admirable book. Its willingness to question established views on the novel has enlightening results. In the boldness and originality of its arguments, it makes a valuable contribution not only to scholarship on the novelists it considers, but also more widely to our understanding of the novel as a genre."--Matthew Peters, Times Literary Supplement "Erudite, nuanced, and utterly convincing... Empty Houses must soon take its place in the canon of absolutely necessary studies of Victorian and later fiction."--Victorian Studies "David Kurnick's dazzling new book, Empty Houses, draws much of its considerable force from its antipathy toward the traditional novel's psychosexual categories of identity and their ideological uses. Kurnick elaborates his elegant polemic through substantial and richly satisfying reinterpretations of works, both familiar and relatively neglected."--Joseph Litvak, Novel "Kurnick's thoughtful, subtle, well-argued book focuses on five writers closely associated with the movement toward, and the apotheosis of, interiority in the novel: Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and James Baldwin. All had theatrical ambitions that were largely unsuccessful. Kurnick makes the case that the novel's shift from public spaces to psychological interior spaces is fraught with ambivalence, with 'longing references to the public worlds they would seem to have left behind.'"--Choice "Kurnick writes with both precision and verve, and his wonderfully fine grained close readings are always in the service of his larger--sometimes breathtakingly large--claims... This is an important book that demands to be pondered and deserves to be argued with--and applauded."--Daniel Hack, Nineteenth-Century Literature "Another impressive study is David Kurnick's Empty Houses ... Kurnick supports his argument with incisive, subtle readings of passages from major novels by his four authors as well as from such less frequently studied works as Thackeray's Lovel the Widower and George Eliot's The Spanish Gypsy."--John O. Jordan, SEL Studies in English Literature "David Kurnick's rereading of the novel of interiority is undoubtedly far-reaching, yet it is far from monolithic. Part of the strength of his work lies in the varied texture that he gives to his ideas as he explores how writers spanning more than one-hundred years used their experiences with the theater to reshape their prose."--David Kornhaber, Ravon "Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel advances a sophisticated, highly nuanced argument about the relationship of drama, performance, and fiction... Kurnick's argument ... is formidable and skillfully executed... [V]ery often brilliant and incisive."--Stephen Watt, James Joyce Literary Supplement Empty Houses, informed by Kurnick's nuanced and convincing formalist readings, is not only an important contribution to narrative theory and genre studies, but also offers insights into several issues that literary scholars have either dismissed or taken for granted, with authorial intention, literary failures, and canonicity being among them."--Philip Tsang, Textual Practice "While Kurnick includes fascinating histories of both the nineteenth-century theatre and the allure it held for the aforementioned authors, as well as careful inclusions of other critical interpretations of the fictions he considers, it is Kurnick's own original and ground-breaking analyses of the impact of these unperformed plays, and plays that might have been, that make Empty Houses such a worthwhile read."--Susan Ray, George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies "Kurnick has discerned a 'melancholy of generic distinction' whose ramifications far exceed the novels and novelists on whom he builds his argument."--Jonathan V. Farina, Wordsworth Circle "Kurnick's radiant and rigorous book ... has the rare quality of appealing to both theater and novel critics, and in bridging these worlds it enjoins us all to wider aspirations... The argument is intricately nested and wrought in vivacious and exhilarating prose."--Daniel Williams, Modern Language NotesTable of ContentsIntroduction Interiority and Its Discontents 1 Theater Demetaphorized 1 Theater Dethematized: Spatializations of the Novel 10 The Vocation of Failure 24 Chapter One: Acoustics in the Thackeray Theater 29 "The Play" 29 Trivializing History, or, Domesticity 33 Diminishing Returns: Vanity Fair's Theatricality 42 The Box-Opener: A Note on Becky Sharp 50 Empty House Theatricals: The Wolves and the Lamb 53 In the Recess of Consciousness: Lovel the Widower 56 Chapter Two: George Eliot's Lot 67 Theater and Abstraction 67 Romola, Felix Holt, and the Uses of Inwardness 74 The Spanish Gypsy's Universal Theater 82 Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, and the Cast of Mind 91 Chapter Three: Henry James's Awkward Stage 105 Other Almost Anyhow 105 The Performance Imaginary: The Other House, 1896 113 The Performance Imaginary II: The Other House, 1909 121 In the Sociable Dusk of The Awkward Age 126 James and His Kind 136 What Does Jamesian Style Want? 144 Chapter Four: Joyce Unperformed 153 Joycean Exposures 153 Epiphany and the Obscene Body 158 Ibsen, Exiles, and the Scene of Sex 167 Backstage at the Library: "Scylla and Charybdis" 178 The Ineluctable Modality of the Legible: "Circe" 183 Epilogue In the Kingdom of Whomever: Baldwin's Method 192 Notes 207 Index 245

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Book SynopsisPresents an account of the rise and fall of Purgatory as both a belief and a lucrative institution - as well as a capacious new reading of the power of Hamlet. This book explores the adventure narratives, ghost stories, pilgrimages, and imagery by which a belief in a grisly "prison house of souls" had been shaped and reinforced in the Middle Ages.Trade Review"Greenblatt's mode of analysis has always been to leap the gulf between the early modern past and the present... Hamlet in Purgatory, his finest book in years, is a magnificent extended commentary on the otherness of the work in which Hamlet's father's ghost walked on stage. Greenblatt leaves it to us to find the spaces that it now haunts within the family or the world of politics, in the bedroom or on the battlements."--Peter Holland, New York Review of Books "[A] highly instructive investigation of the role of spirits from the other world in Shakespeare. [Greenblatt's] writing here is poised, precise, and ... eloquent... Hamlet in Purgatory is an exemplary work of historically informed literary interpretation."--Robert Alter, New York Times Book Review "This is an interesting book on a grave matter ... We marvel that the author can make so much out of a slender theme, but it is the device of the good academic writer to make small amounts of material yield golden insights."--Peter Ackroyd, The Times of London "Greenblatt's fascination with ghostly texts is contagious, and he is virtually unequaled among literary critics as a prose stylist... [Hamlet in Purgatory] greatly succeeds in bringing alive the powerful complex of fear and longing Shakespeare so deftly deployed. Required reading for those who study Shakespeare, this graceful analysis should also give considerable pleasure to those who merely enjoy him."--Publishers Weekly "Greenblatt's is not by any means nostalgic reading. The book gains its energy from an ongoing tension between the author's intellectual openness to apparently bizarre religious practices and his sharp skepticism... To have explicated new aspects of a play that has probably been more intensely studied than any other work of literature is a remarkable achievement that triumphantly vindicates the book's method... Enthralling reading... Greenblatt has offered genuinely new insights that make the familiar words seem strange and new, and that will speak powerfully to a new generation uneasy about its own unease with an earlier generation's religious beliefs."--David Norbrook, The New Republic "A learned and persuasive book."--John Bossy, London Review of Books "Hamlet in Purgatory neither pretends to solve the mysteries of the play nor indulges in fruitless speculation about Shakespeare's own sectarian allegiances. Instead, it offers masterly accounts first of the history of the idea of Purgatory and its decline, then of the importance of ghosts and related apparitions in the whole range of Shakespeare's plays... Profoundly original."--Jonathan Bate, The Sunday Telegraph "[An] astonishing work of historical reconstruction... [Greenblatt] has taken on the challenge of defamiliarizing the most famous play in Western literature by placing it in its proper theological setting... [W]hile he must definitely rank as the most influential and knowledgeable of all the New Historicists he now shows himself in this book as something more, much more."--Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal "Greenblatt reveals how Shakespeare turned the Anglican assault on the idea of purgatory as mere poetry into an indispensable poetic resource. In addition to this decisive repositioning of Hamlet's place in modern culture, Greenblatt provides extraordinary readings of little-know works... A major work of contemporary scholarship."--Choice "A brilliant treatment of the history of Purgatory in England and its survivals and echoes throughout Shakespeare's plays, above all Hamlet."--Carol Zaleski, First Things "Greenblatt has shown beautifully what compellingly affective, even ethical, 'claims' Shakespeare's imaginary characters can make on modern readers, rewarding us with some of his liveliest and most original critical writing to date."--Katherine Duncan-Jones, Times Literary Supplement "A magisterial study containing impeccable scholarship, interesting narratives, incisive analyses of specific passages, cogent generalizations based upon a number of disciplines, seamless utilization of appropriate quotations, and, finally, a compelling sensitivity to the effects of literature on its past and present audiences."--Frank Ardolino, Sixteenth Century JournalTable of ContentsLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi PREFACE xiii PROLOGUE 3 CHAPTER ONE A Poet's Fable 10 CHAPTER TWO Imagining Purgatory 47 CHAPTER THREE The Rights of Memory 102 CHAPTER FOUR Staging Ghosts 151 CHAPTER FIVE Remember Me 205 EPILOGUE 258 NOTES 263 INDEX 315

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Book SynopsisExamines Abraham Lincoln's fascination with and knowledge of Shakespeare's plays. Michael Anderegg discusses Lincoln's particular interest in Macbeth and Hamlet and in Shakespeare's historical plays, where we see themes that resonated deeply with the president.Trade ReviewWhile Lincoln’s love of Shakespeare is well documented, Michael Anderegg has produced the first fullscale study of that important subject. In addition to skillfully examining the ways that the dramas that Lincoln read or saw were published and performed, Professor Anderegg plausibly analyzes his responses to them. This is a most welcome addition to the Lincoln literature." - Michael Burlingame, author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life"Marvelously indepth research. Anderegg has effectively turned mined archives into an engaging account-smoothly written with a refreshing lack of jargon. There is much to learn here. - Robert Bray, author of Reading with Lincoln"This deeply researched and engaging book thoroughly explores Lincoln’s lifelong ‘Shakespearean journey’ and helps us see even more complexity and nuance in our most admired president." - Martin P. Johnson, author of Writing the Gettysburg Address

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsPreface Introduction Part I: Theory: Towards a definition of tragedy Chapter I. A categorical review Chapter II. Voltaire's concept of tragedy A. Prefaces, commentaries and correspondences B. Voltaire and Aristotle C. The critics' interpretation Part II: Practice: The cycle from Œdipe to Mérope Chapter I. Œdipe Chapter II. ZaïreChapter III. Alzire Chapter IV. MahometChapter V. MéropePart III: Conclusion: The inner significance of the tragedies Chapter I. Tragedy, history and drama Chapter II. The inner significance of the tragedies List of works consulted Index

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsRemerciements Avant-propos I. Théâtre et cité 1. Louis-Sébastian Mercier, ou l’aurore de l’Intellectuel 2. Mercier devant la postérité 3. Mercier caricature de Diderot? 4. Mercier singe de Rousseau? 5. Mercier voltarien? (encore sur Rousseau) II. L’esthétique du ‘quoique beau’ 6. En littérature tout est bien? 7. La bibliothéque de Mercier 8. Les arts ‘matériellement imitatifs’ 9. La parole: de l’imitation à la création Conclusion, ou une poétique à ne pas jeter au feu Epitaphe Bibliographies Index des noms

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewEighteenth-century specialists are well acquainted with the controversies surrounding the premieres of Charles Palissot's Les Philosophes and Voltaire's Le Caffé; ou, L'Écossaise at the Comédie-Française in 1760. […] Connors offers new perspectives on the conflict by delving deeply into the pamphlet literature and periodical reviews of the affair. For example, there is an insightful analysis of the short pamphlet Les Philosophes manqués by André-Charles Cailleau, written in the form of a play but never intended for the stage, which demonstrates how participants in the controversy appealed to both readers and spectators.[…] [T]his book is a welcome addition to recent interdisciplinary approaches to the interplay of public theatre and political culture in Old Regime and Revolutionary France.- French StudiesConnors’s rich description of the political and personal calculations involved in Voltaire’s decision to enter the fray convincingly buttresses the argument that these plays assume a new genre identity by being mobilized for publicity purposes that far exceed the boundaries of the stage.- Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern EraTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsList of illustrationsIntroduction: decision makers, doctes and theatre1. Culture wars: philosphes and anti-philosophes in eighteenth-century France2. The anatomy of a crime: polemics, pamphlets and preconditioning3. A critical performance: Les Philosophes hits the boards4. Parterre and balcony, spectator and reader: Palissot’s dramaturgical strategies5. Pamphlets on the stage: Voltaire’s riposte philosophique6. Spectators or readers? Voltaire’s ‘public’ concerns in L’Ecossaise7. The affair continues: critical uncertainty in eighteenth-century France8. (Re)Creating the event: performance criticism as intellectual war9. Following the event: new definitions of theatre and criticism10. Aftermath: theatre and polemics in pre-Revolutionary FranceConclusion: le cri publicBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisDans cet ouvrage Sarah Benharrech met en lumière les tours que le dramaturge donne à la notion de caractère dont il hérite des moralistes et naturalistes du Grand Siècle, et à partir de laquelle il développe une pensée morale de la transformation.Trade Review‘This is a detailed and carefully argued study of the writings of Marivaux-his journalism, novels and comedies-which sets out to show how, through formal, thematic, generic and conceptual innovation, he played a formative role at a decisive stage in the history of personal identity. […] [It] constitutes an impressively erudite and stimulating contribution to the literary and cultural history of the Enlightenment more broadly’.- French StudiesTable of ContentsIntroductionI Le caractère1. La science du moraliste2. La contrainte et la commodité3. La synecdoque briséeII Le sans caractère4. La fuite de soi-même5. L’ambivalence de l’amphibie6. La méthode du romanIII Transformations7. Les évolutions du caractère8. La leçon libertine9. Diderot mène l’enquêteConclusionBibliographie

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewReviews ‘Cet ouvrage s’attache à demontrer que les récits en prose, de la Restauration jusqu’au milieu du XVIIIe siècle, sont influencés en profondeur par des techniques empruntées au théâtre’ […] [Il est] très bien étayé sur des sources primaires et secondaires pertinentes’.RSÉAA XVII-XVIII‘One of the most interesting aspects of Widmayer’s study is her focus on the use of stage space by the four authors [Behn, Nanley, Fielding, Congreve] (…) but to different effects.’Papers on Language and LiteratureTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Aphra Behn’s dramatic techniques in prose: credibility and female poweri. Behn’s and Southerne’s Oroonokos: individuals and groupsii. Parallels between the narrator and Oroonokoiii. Echoes of Rover I2. Performed emotion in Delarivier Manley’s works: actors and voyeursi. Discovering emotion in Manley’s playsii. Scenes in Manley’s proseiii. Validating female emotion in Memoirs of Europe and The Power of love3. Hybrid dramatic-narrative techniques: William Congreve’s Incognita and The Old batchelori. Staging lovers in Dryden’s Assignation and Congreve’s Incognitaii. Scarron’s influence upon Incognitaiii. Heartwell as satirical commentator in The Old batchelor4. Abandoning control over ‘reality’: author-characters in Henry Fielding’s playsi. The satirist satirized in Fielding’s author-character playsii. Author-characters as Fielding’s theatrical avatars5. Self-conscious anti-realism: readers as actor-authors in Henry Fielding’s prosei. Fielding’s self-ironizing author-charactersii. Novel characters who comment metatheatrically6. ConclusionBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisKing Lear occupies a special place in the Shakespearean canon. Lear's descent into madness, the central event of this play, illustrates the extent to which humanity can be degraded by its errors. This study guide contains a selection of the finest criticism through the centuries on ""King Lear"". It also includes a biography of Shakespeare.

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Book SynopsisThe most striking difference between Othello and Shakespeare's other tragedies is its more intimate scale. Since the play focuses on personal rather than public life, Othello's private descent into jealous obsession is especially chilling to behold. This study guide contains a selection of the finest criticism through the centuries on Othello.

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Book SynopsisMacbeth is Shakespeare's stark tale of a tormented nobleman driven into a murderous plot by his ambition to assume the throne of Scotland. This study guide to the play contains a selection of the finest criticism through the centuries on ""Macbeth"". It also includes a summary, analysis of key passages, and a biography of Shakespeare.

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Book SynopsisBeginning with Aristotle and the Greeks and ending with semiotics and post-structuralism, Theories of the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey of Western dramatic theory. In this expanded edition the author has updated the book and added a new...Trade ReviewA comprehensive and readable guide that will be the standard work for many years to come. * Times Literary Supplement *Carlson has taken on the monumental task of abstracting the major theoretical statements on the theater from the Greeks to the present. He cogently summarizes the texts, drawing comparisons freely while avoiding evaluation. The book's organization is historical, with national divisions until the 20th century, at which time all countries are considered together within much more finely defined time limits. This is a much needed book. * Choice *The coverage in Theories of the Theatre is remarkable. It is already difficult to imagine seriously undertaking theatre studies without this volume in a prominent place on one's shelf. * Theatre Survey *

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Book SynopsisKuriyama's new biography reconstructs the eventful life of a radically innovative playwright who flourished briefly and died violently more than four hundred years ago, yet persists in the romantic imagination even today.Trade ReviewAlthough Kuriyama devotes plenty of space to the writer's posthumous progress,... the real value of her book lies in the prevailing skepticism with which she treats her subject: the documentary evidence and the conspiracy theories favored throughout the past century. -- Michael Caines * Times Literary Supplement *Constance Brown Kuriyama's new book on Christopher Marlowe offers a refreshing counter to some of the more speculative and conspiracy-theory oriented works of literary biography on the young playwright. In her methodological introduction she presents a candid and honest overview of the demands and pitfalls of biographical writing and illustrates some of the dangers for Marlowe scholarship of valorizing a documentary-based approach without considering the immediate context of chosen primary materials.... Kuriyama's book is clearly presented with chapters structured around successive stages of Marlowe's personal development.... As a readable introduction to the playwright's life this book offers students a highly commendable combination of both primary and secondary material. -- Matthew Woodcock * Sixteenth Century Journal *Double agents, barroom brawls, counterfeit coins, paid informants, hired henchmen, intelligence networks spanning foreign locales, and dashing gents sent on clandestine missions for Her Majesty's secret service—descriptions from the most recent James Bond film? No, just some of the disputed details from Constance Brown Kuriyama's new biography of Christopher Marlowe.... My own sense is that the actual 'facts' of the poet and playwright's life lie somewhere between the wild speculations of Marlowe's more imaginative biographer's and Kuriyama's necessary and important corrective to them. -- Robert Sawyer * South Atlantic Review *In this more speculative life of Marlowe, Kuriyama provides insightful details into English education, politics, and religion during the Renaissance. * Library Journal *Kuriyama has written a smart 'life' shot through with learning—a timely look at the most notorious early modern 'badboy' and his reputation. * Studies in English Literature *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. A Canterbury Tale 2. Fetching Gentry from the University 3. Commencing M.A.: Acquaintances, Friends, and Connections 4. A Poet's Life in London 5. Lord Strange and Thomas Walsingham 6. Fortune Turns Base 7. A Trim Reckoning 8. The Dead Shepherd 9. Marlow Lost and FoundAppendix: Transcriptions and Translations of Selected Documents References Index

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Book SynopsisHow should a literary scholar approach a text characterized not by stability but by variation and flux? This book offers a radical new perspective on the limits—and the accomplishments—of the modern traditions of textual criticism in classics. Sean...Trade Review"Iphigenias at Aulis is an outstanding piece of scholarship. It is sure to be a defining work on the cutting edge of a new and burgeoning trend across the humanities and within classical studies as well. The theory is sound, the thesis is daring, the scholarship impeccable, and the readings inventive and convincing." -- James I. Porter, University of Michigan"Sean Alexander Gurd reconfigures textual criticism as a field through which some of the most pressing questions in the interpretation of literature can be traced. This transformation of classical philology is achieved in a thorough analysis of what is, without doubt, the most complicated, textually, of all the Greek tragedies, Iphigenia at Aulis. Gurd's groundbreaking analysis shows how the textual criticism of this play provides the basis for what he calls a 'radical philology.' In this approach not only is the invigoration of Classical textual criticism at stake but also the invigoration of Classical literature and the history of its reception." -- David S. Ferris, University of Colorado

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Book SynopsisRevising our understanding of music's relationship to language and literature in Renaissance England.Trade ReviewOrtiz's goal is to reexamine all the concepts related to and about music in Renaissance England and specifically to argue that Shakespeare challenges many of the concepts that were carried over from medieval notions and viewpoints.... It is a fascinating approach and historical perspective that has been lost on previous scholarship in this area.... This is an important contribution to musicological, historical, and Shakespearean studies. -- Bradford Lee Eden * Sixteenth Century Journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Disciplining Music 1. Titus Andronicus and the Production of Musical Meaning 2. "Her speech is nothing": Mad Speech and the Female Musician 3. Teaching Music: The Rule of Allegory 4. Impolitic Noise: Resisting Orpheus from Julius Caesar to The Tempest 5. Shakespeare's Idolatry: Psalms and Hornpipes in The Winter's Tale 6. The Reforming of Reformation: Milton's A MaskeSelected Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisHeather Hirschfeld recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term "satisfaction" as used in dramas of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.Trade ReviewHirschfeld's readings are consistently imaginative and challenging. Her book is the product of wide reading and deep and sustained thinking and does enough to satisfy this reader. -- Kennth J.E. Graham * Early Theatre *One mark of a good critical book is that it creates a minifield and brings together disparate scholarship into new connections. This characterizes Heather Hirschfield's new book, which coalesces around the term "satisfaction." If the subject were only the satisfaction for sin discussed by theology, the result might be predictable. But Hirschfield connects theological satisfaction with an unexpected context, the Rolling Stones’ "I can’t get no satisfaction," a playful connection that is, in fact, productive. -- Dennis Taylor * Renaissance Quarterly *Part of the book's achievment is that the questions it continually seems to elicit from the reader are as suprising as Hirshcfield's own argument is provocative.... The End of Satisfaction makes a real contribution to our sense of how changing theologies of penitence were registered by the culture—and especially drama—of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. -- William Junker * Comparative Drama *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Where's Satisfaction? 1. "Adew, to all Popish satisfactions": Reforming Repentance in Early Modern England 2. The Satisfactions of Hell: Doctor Faustus and the Descensus Tradition 3. Setting Things Right: The Satisfactions of Revenge 4. As Good as a Feast?: Playing (with) Enough on the Elizabethan Stage5. "Wooing, wedding, and repenting": The Satisfactions of Marriage in Othello and Love’s Pilgrimage Postscript: Where’s the Stage at the End of Satisfaction?

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Book SynopsisSophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus is the most famous of ancient tragedies and a literary masterpiece. It is not, however, the only classical dramatization of Oedipus' quest to discover his identity. Between four and five hundred years after Sophocles' play...Trade Review"Among the dozens of translations of the Oedipus tragedy available, very few provide the kind of close, elegant reading this one does, for both staging and teaching. Ahl recreates the authentic political and religious context for the often erroneously channeled Freudian take on the old identity vehicle, while paying scrupulous attention to the original language.... This is a new rendering for a new generation.""Elegant, polished, easily readable and—no mean feat—performable, Frederick Ahl's versions of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus—and Seneca's Oedipus—are likely to advance to the forefront of modern translations of these plays and to point the way for future work. Ahl is laudably clear and nontechnical. His book addresses the needs of college and university instructors and will appeal to general readers and stage professionals as well." -- Martin M. Winkler, George Mason University"Our view of Oedipus Tyrannus, the finest of all Greek tragedies, has been colored by Renaissance reception of the Senecan Oedipus, much better known until a couple of centuries ago. Frederick Ahl has successfully freed Sophocles' play from modern 'interference' as well as from Freudian misapprehension and error. He has also gone a long way toward placing Oedipus Tyrannus in its original political and religious context, and makes a case for seeing Oedipus as a product of Augustan Rome. The translations are superb: close, and not merely literal, but literate. A landmark in scholarship." -- Michael Vickers, University of Oxford

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Book SynopsisChristopher Marlowe (15641593) emerges in most accounts of his life by biographers and critics as a mysterious and sensational action figure, a hapless pawn of circumstance, or a pseudonymous cipher. Constance Brown Kuriyama''s new biography reconstructs the eventful life of a radically innovative playwright who flourished briefly and died violently more than four hundred years ago, yet persists in the romantic imagination even today.Many discoveries about Marlowe''s life have emerged over the past hundred years. The author here supplements these findings with new material, placing the dramatist and poet more precisely in his historical milieu. Kuriyama interprets Marlowe''s acts of violenceinexplicable though they may seemas logical consequences of the circumstances he faced. Experience and temperament both accounted for the characteristically brash way he moved through the world.The stringent constraints of Elizabethan society, which encouraged intense political and Trade ReviewAlthough Kuriyama devotes plenty of space to the writer's posthumous progress,... the real value of her book lies in the prevailing skepticism with which she treats her subject: the documentary evidence and the conspiracy theories favored throughout the past century. -- Michael Caines * Times Literary Supplement *Constance Brown Kuriyama's new book on Christopher Marlowe offers a refreshing counter to some of the more speculative and conspiracy-theory oriented works of literary biography on the young playwright. In her methodological introduction she presents a candid and honest overview of the demands and pitfalls of biographical writing and illustrates some of the dangers for Marlowe scholarship of valorizing a documentary-based approach without considering the immediate context of chosen primary materials.... Kuriyama's book is clearly presented with chapters structured around successive stages of Marlowe's personal development.... As a readable introduction to the playwright's life this book offers students a highly commendable combination of both primary and secondary material. -- Matthew Woodcock * Sixteenth Century Journal *Double agents, barroom brawls, counterfeit coins, paid informants, hired henchmen, intelligence networks spanning foreign locales, and dashing gents sent on clandestine missions for Her Majesty's secret service—descriptions from the most recent James Bond film? No, just some of the disputed details from Constance Brown Kuriyama's new biography of Christopher Marlowe.... My own sense is that the actual 'facts' of the poet and playwright's life lie somewhere between the wild speculations of Marlowe's more imaginative biographer's and Kuriyama's necessary and important corrective to them. -- Robert Sawyer * South Atlantic Review *In this more speculative life of Marlowe, Kuriyama provides insightful details into English education, politics, and religion during the Renaissance. * Library Journal *Kuriyama has written a smart 'life' shot through with learning—a timely look at the most notorious early modern 'badboy' and his reputation. * Studies in English Literature *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. A Canterbury Tale 2. Fetching Gentry from the University 3. Commencing M.A.: Acquaintances, Friends, and Connections 4. A Poet's Life in London 5. Lord Strange and Thomas Walsingham 6. Fortune Turns Base 7. A Trim Reckoning 8. The Dead Shepherd 9. Marlow Lost and FoundAppendix: Transcriptions and Translations of Selected Documents References Index

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Book SynopsisBeginning with Aristotle and the Greeks and ending with semiotics and post-structuralism, Theories of the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey of Western dramatic theory. In this expanded edition the author has updated the book and added a new...Trade ReviewA comprehensive and readable guide that will be the standard work for many years to come. * Times Literary Supplement *Carlson has taken on the monumental task of abstracting the major theoretical statements on the theater from the Greeks to the present. He cogently summarizes the texts, drawing comparisons freely while avoiding evaluation. The book's organization is historical, with national divisions until the 20th century, at which time all countries are considered together within much more finely defined time limits. This is a much needed book. * Choice *The coverage in Theories of the Theatre is remarkable. It is already difficult to imagine seriously undertaking theatre studies without this volume in a prominent place on one's shelf. * Theatre Survey *

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Book SynopsisThis book shows how Sophocles' method of presenting character, his unique handling of myth, his predilection for presenting ideas by comparison and contrast, and his principles of structure are so closely related that they serve to clarify each other.Trade ReviewAn important and substantial book that confirms Kirkwood's position in the front ranks of criticism. * Classical World *Kirkwood displays the sure touch of one who has been familiar with his author for years. His analysis and exposition have a deft clarity that is not only scholarly but wholly charming. Kirkwood's judgments, even where we might disagree with them, always reflect a good sense and mature deliberation. * American Journal of Philology *The intention of Kirkwood's clear and well-written book is to study the dramatic methods of Sophocles, especially in the revelation of character. The chapter on construction, distinguishing 'diptych,' 'linear,' and 'triangular' form in the plays, and the chapter on the role of the chorus both center on what is, for the author, the primary essence of Sophocles' art: the delineation of his heroic, or merely human, characters. Sophocles' method is chiefly one of interplay: his dramatis personae are revealed, Kirkwood points out, through their relationships with each other, an observation not in itself new, but developed here extensively and convincingly. * Phoenix *

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Book SynopsisIn his new concluding chapter, Peter Kivy advances his argument on behalf of a distinctive intellectual and musical character of opera before Mozart. He proposes that happy endings were a musical—as opposed to a dramatic—necessity for opera during...Trade ReviewKivy is simply the best philosopher writing about music today.... Here he studies the special problem of opera, how it became both a dramatic and a musical art, and what its underlying aesthetic principles are. He traces opera's philosophical foundations from the imitation theories of Plato and Aristotle, to the representation theory of the Italian Camerata, the mechanistic psychology of Descartes, the doctrine of affektenlehre, and the associationist psychology of the British Enlightenment.... Kivy's writing is honest, insightful, careful, and witty.... There is meat here for philosophers, musicians, music theorists, historians, and social critics. * Choice *Kivy provides close philosophical analysis of texts that underpin the origins of Western European opera and... relates seventeenth and eighteenth-century operatic practice to the philosophical and psychological theories of the times.... In a long and generally excellent discussion Kivy takes as his target those writers... who attempt to deduce a composer's psycho-biography from other librettos he chooses to set.... Kivy's book has a certain acumen and charm. * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisNo literary figure has proved so elusive as Shakespeare. How, Courtney Lehmann asks, can the controversies surrounding the Bard's authorship be resolved when his works precede the historical birth of that modern concept? And how is it that Shakespeare...Trade ReviewThis is a first-rate study-densely written, expertly controlled, and intellectually invigorating.... Shakespeare Remains is a rare work-an original reflection on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theater and an important contribution to discussion about 'the contestatory nature of Shakespeare's inheritance.'... Will significantly change perceptions of Shakespeare in all of his historical guises. -- Mark Thornton Burnett * Shakespeare Quarterly *Overall, Lehmann's book is itself a montage of sorts, an intelligent, inventive engagement between Shakespeare studies and post-modern theory. * Virginia Quarterly Review *The issue of authorship—its history, meaning, and significance—is what Courtney Lehmann explores in her book Shakespeare Remains: Theatre to Film, Early Modern to Postmodern. -- Ken Wong * Consciousness, LIterature and the Arts *Equally smart and timely, Courtney Lehmann's Shakespeare Remains: Theater to Film, Early Modern to Postmodern is both original and conceptually brilliant.... Assured work by one of the best scholars of Shakespeare's films, this is a 'don't miss' book. -- Barbara Hodgdon * Studies in English Literature *Shakespeare Remains... provides readers of Shakespeare and performance practitioners with an accessible critical perspective that links the literary body of Shakespeare's received texts to contemporary film adaptations of his plays. -- Joe Falocco, Catawba College * Renaissance Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the social institutions, the prevailing social values, and the ideology of the ancient city-state as revealed in Roman Comedy. "The very essence of comedy is social," writes David Konstan, "and in the complex movement of its plots...Trade ReviewA fresh, tightly written and reasoned analysis of plays by Plautus and Terence, directed chiefly to the social and ethical implications of the plots. Konstan's goal is not social history but an interpretation of the playwright's artistry in constructing the social world of each play. His innovative approach should improve our understanding of the complex use of social tensions in comedy. * The Key Reporter *There is a striking scholarly brilliance underlying David Konstan's work. It is classical scholarship at its very best: objective, thorough, comparative, knowledgeable, and in this case, innovative and thought provoking. In eight, well-written, closely-annotated chapters (plus an introduction and conclusion), Konstan examines how six plays by Plautus and two by Terence reflect... 'tension in values as the mainspring of the drama....'. * Theatre Studies *This is a very important book in the study of Roman comedy and, indeed, in the study of comedy and society generally.... Konstan's ideas are profound; some are controversial; all are worth considering. * The Classical Bulletin *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA magnificent study... [that] illuminates the role of folk culture in medieval drama, especially in the cycle plays and moralities, and convincingly carries the tradition forward into Elizabethan drama... We are fortunate indeed to have this book. -- David Bevington ClioTable of ContentsEditor's PrefaceIntroductionChapter 1. The MimusChapter 2. The Folk Play and Social CustomChapter 3. The Mystery CyclesChapter 4. Moralities and InterludesChapter 5. The Elizabethan DramaChapter 6. Shakespeare's Theater: Tradition and ExperimentAppendixAbbreviationsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisKerrigan's approach reflects his interests in literary formalism, historical scholarship, intellectual history, and psychoanalysis.Trade ReviewKerrigan's reading of the tradition is illuminating, subtle, informed, and informative, and he uses it to establish his reading of the play, working within the tradition but extending it to hitherto unseen and insightful ways. Philosophy and Literature

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Book SynopsisShakespeare's Promises is a unique and valuable resource, providing a fresh perspective that will benefit all readers of Shakespeare.Trade ReviewImpressive in its intellectual reach, often witty, and always moving in its claims for the powerful and inescapable bonds that make us human. Journal of English and Germanic Philology A book of considerable interest, with many thought-provoking readings of specific speeches and dramatic moments, and sketches the scope of this vast subject with admirable brevity and clarity. -- Danielle Clarke Early Modern Literary Studies 2004

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Book SynopsisThe Records of Early English Drama volumes make available historical transcripts that provide evidence of early English drama, music, ceremonial dance, and other forms of communal public entertainment in Britain from the Middle Ages to 1642, when the Puritans closed the London theatres.

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Book SynopsisBernard Shaw and William Archer is the final volume in the series on the Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw. The two colleagues loved to debate with one another in public, and these feisty arguments regularly carried over to the letters, which bear witness to the vital partnership between a theatre critic and a playwright.Trade Review‘Highly recommended.’ -- H.I. Einsohn * Choice Magazine vol 55:07:2018 *Table of ContentsGeneral Editor's Note Introduction Editor's Note Abbreviations and Works Cited LETTERS Table of Correspondents Index

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Book SynopsisIn this book, Albert W. Halsall presents the first complete treatment in English of Hugo's plays - a history, plot summary, and detailed analysis of all the dramas, from Cromwel and Torquemada to the juvenilia and the epic melodrama Les Burgraves.

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