Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Philosopher's English King: Shakespeare's
Book SynopsisThe Philosopher's English King offers a close reading of the Henriad, presenting Shakespeare's teaching on political authority and contributing to the burgeoning scholarship on Shakespeare as a political thinker. This book on Shakespeare's Henriad studies the tetralogy as a work of political thought. Leon Harold Craig, author of two previous volumes on Shakespeare's political thought, argues that the four plays present Shakespeare'steaching on the problem of legitimacy, or who has the right to rule -- one of the perennial questions of political philosophy. Offering original interpretations of each of the plays, Craig discusses the demise of divine right inRichard II, political upheaval and disputed rule in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and the attempt to reestablish legitimacy on a new basis in Henry V. While focusing especially on the plays' various interpretive puzzles,Craig shows how the four plays constitute one narrative, culminating in the rule of England's most famous warrior king, Henry V, whose brilliant achievements were undone by ill fortune. Craig concludes with an epilogue on what might have been had Henry lived to consolidate his conquest of France and unify it with England under a single crown. Supported by a wealth of scholarship, both historical and critical, The Philosopher's English King makes a major contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on Shakespeare as a political thinker, providing further evidence for why the poet deserves to be recognized as a philosopher in his own right. Leon Harold Craig is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alberta.Trade ReviewI consider this one of the best books ever written on Shakespeare's Henriad. The level of scholarship is second to none. Each chapter is as good as the next. The book is never uneven, and Craig's passion for his subject matter and his desire to share his knowledge with his readers is evident throughout. Not only does one gain many valuable insights into these plays, we are also encouraged to read Shakespeare philosophically, as I am certain Shakespeare wished to be read. * VOEGELINVIEW *Supported by the author's learned command of the relevant English history, this analysis not only serves as a comprehensive overview of the plays' events but also shows how paying attention to even the most minute details and minor characters can shed light on Shakespeare's central figures and plot lines. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Dissenting from Craig requires the disputant's exercising his utmost capacities for philosophical reflection. . . . Because Craig rightly conceives the philosophic poet. * REVIEW OF POLITICS *In The Philosopher's English King Leon Craig once again proves the value of taking Shakespeare seriously as a political thinker. Drawing parallels with important political philosophers, such as Plato, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, Craig illumines some of the darker corners of Shakespeare's history plays and offers a comprehensive interpretation of the tough-minded teaching on kingship they embody. -- Paul A. Cantor, University of VirginiaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue Begins the Woefullest Division: The Tragic Reign of King Richard II A Punishing of Mistreadings: The Turbulent Reign of King Henry IV Proceeds The Noble Change Long Purposed: The Turbulent Reign of King Henry IV Concludes A Curious Mirror of Christian Kings: The Brief Glorious Reign of King Henry V An Alternative Epilogue: Imagining What Might Have Been Notes Bibliography Index of Names
£89.10
University of Iowa Press August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle
Book SynopsisJust prior to his death in 2005, August Wilson, arguably the most important American playwright of the last quarter-century, completed an ambitious cycle of ten plays, each set in a different decade of the twentieth century. Known as the Twentieth-Century Cycle or the Pittsburgh Cycle, the plays, which portrayed the struggles of African Americans, won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, a Tony Award for Best Play, and seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. ""August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle"" is the first volume devoted to the last five plays of the cycle individually - Jitney, Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean, and Radio Golf - and in the context of Wilson's entire body of work. Editor Alan Nadel's ""May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson"", a work Henry Louis Gates called definitive, focused on the first five plays of Wilson's cycle. This new collection examines from myriad perspectives the way Wilson's final works give shape and focus to his complete dramatic opus. It contains an outstanding and diverse array of discussions from leading Wilson scholars and literary critics. Together, the essays in Nadel's two volumes give Wilson's work the breadth of analysis and understanding that this major figure of American drama merits.
£24.65
Modern Language Association of America Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy
Book SynopsisTragedy has been reborn many times since antiquity. Seventeenth-century French playwrights composed tragedies marked by neoclassical aesthetics and the divine-right absolutism of the grand siècle. But their works also speak to the modern imagination, inspiring reactions from Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, adaptations and reworkings by Césaire and Kushner, and new productions by francophone and anglophone directors.This volume addresses both the history of French neoclassical tragedy--its audiences, performance practice, and development as a genre--and the ideas these works raise, such as necessity, free will, desire, power, and moral behavior in the face of limited choices. Essays demonstrate ways to teach the plays through a variety of lenses, such as performance, spectatorship, aesthetics, rhetoric, and affect. The book also explores postcolonial engagement, by writers and directors both in and outside France, with these works.Trade ReviewAn invaluable resource for teachers bringing French neoclassical theater to the classroom, this book contains excellent, concrete suggestions for activities that encourage student engagement and communication." - Roland Racevskis, University of Iowa
£81.60
Chelsea House Publishers Long Day's Journey into Night- Eugene O'Neill
Book SynopsisProduced after the death of Eugene O'Neill, ""Long Day's Journey into Night"" is generally considered the author's masterpiece and a seminal drama of the 20th century. The play explores the often-painful ways in which family members love and recognize one another. This new edition in the ""Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations"" series offers a selection of full-length critical essays that explore the restrictive, but essential, familial bonds that mark and define the characters' lives. Complete with an introductory essay by literary scholar Harold Bloom, this study guide also features a chronology, a bibliography, an index, and notes about the contributors.
£38.21
Chelsea House Publishers Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Book SynopsisIn Shakespeare's powerful drama of destiny and revenge, ""Hamlet"", the troubled prince of Denmark, must overcome his own self-doubt and avenge the murder of his father. This study guides to one of Shakespeare's greatest plays. It contains a selection of contemporary criticism of ""Hamlet"".
£38.21
Chelsea House Publishers Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare
Book SynopsisWith ""Much Ado About Nothing"", Shakespeare advanced his art, rendering the romantic comedy with greater elegance of composition and expression. The vividly depicted Beatrice and Benedick make it a play of character rather than situation, as the threats to romance are eventually banished and obstacles are overcome. The characters experience a psychological shift, rather than a change in their circumstances, in order to arrive at the love and mutual respect awaiting them at the play's conclusion. The critical essays in this study guide will help those studying Shakespeare's work.
£42.46
Chelsea House Publishers All's Well That Ends Well - William Shakespeare
Book SynopsisIn this romantic reconciliation comedy, the sweetly mischievous Helena plots and plans her way to winning the aloof Bertram's hand in marriage. While the lovers are united by the close of the final act, Shakespeare pokes fun at the fantasy, wish fulfillment, and conventions of romantic comedy with the play's ambiguous resolution, which has intrigued scholars, readers, and theatergoers for centuries. This invaluable new study guide to one of Shakespeare's greatest plays contains a selection of the finest criticism through the centuries, plus an introduction by Harold Bloom, an accessible summary of the plot, a comprehensive list of characters, a biography of Shakespeare, and more.
£42.46
Chelsea House Publishers A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare
Book SynopsisShakespeare imbued ""A Midsummer Night's Dream"" with extraordinary complexity. This ethereal fantasy involves four different levels of representation, which intermingle but never wholly fuse. This invaluable new literary reference presents a selection of the best contemporary criticism of one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, introduced by an essay from esteemed scholar Harold Bloom and featuring a bibliography, index, and chronology of the Bard's life. Volumes in the ""Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations"" series are intended for in-depth study of literary classics through eight to 12 full-length essays that represent the best criticism available on a specific work.
£38.21
Chelsea House Publishers Othello - William Shakespeare
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 rendered all the more chilling to behold. This invaluable literary reference guide to one of Shakespeare's greatest plays contains a selection of the finest contemporary criticism, an introductory essay by Shakespearean scholar Harold Bloom, an index for easy reference, a bibliography, and a chronology of the playwright's life. Volumes in the ""Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations"" series are intended for in-depth study of literary classics through eight to 12 full-length essays that represent the best criticism available on a specific work.
£38.21
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German
Book SynopsisUncovers the central role of Brecht reception in Turkish theater and Turkish-German literature, examining interactions between Turkish and German writers, texts, and contexts. Bertolt Brecht died in 1956, but his theory and practice has continued to shape debates about the politics of culture - not only in Germany, but in Turkey as well, where a new generation of intellectuals emerged during a period ofliberalization in the 1960s and sought to link culture to politics, art to life, theater to revolutionary practice. Ever since, Brecht has connected two cultures that have become ever more intertwined. Drawing upon archival research and close textual analysis, this study reconstructs how Brecht's thought was first interpreted by theater practitioners in Turkey and then by Turkish writers living in Germany. Gezen first focuses on Turkey in the 1960s, reconstructing theater programming and critical debates in literary journals in order to explore how Brechtian stage productions thematized issues in Turkish politics and cultural affairs. She then traces the significance of Brechtiantheater practice and aesthetics for Aras Ören (1939-) and Emine Sevgi Özdamar (1946-), two important writers, actors, and dramatists who emigrated to Germany. By shedding light on their theatrical involvement in Turkey and East and West Germany, this study not only introduces a new context for comprehending individual works, but also enhances our understanding of the intellectual interchanges that shaped the emergence of Turkish-German literature. Ela E. Gezen is Associate Professor of German at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Trade ReviewThis cohesive, well-written, and overdue analysis examines the interconnections and intersections of Brecht's political aesthetics, Turkish theater, and Turkish-German literature . . . [and] is an invaluable asset to Brecht scholars, Ören scholars, Özdamar scholars, and all those working in German studies, theater and performance studies, Turkish-German studies, and especially on relationships and intersections between Turkish and German literature. -- Britta Kallin * FEMINIST GERMAN STUDIES *Gezen's rich and informative book provides deep insights into Turkish-German cultural history, as seen through the lens of Bertolt Brecht...[A] book that can pave the path for new directions in German Studies and for a more global understanding of Brecht's aesthetics. -- Vera Stegmann * BRECHT YEARBOOK *[T]he broader significance of this book for German studies [is that] by reading the work of Ören and Özdamar in the context of the Turkish Brecht reception and as a continued exchange in the realm of theater, Gezen seeks to shift 'our attention away from thinking about Turkish writers in Germany purely through the lens of labor migration' (106). As the quali?er 'purely' implies, Gezen thereby construes her study not as a rejection or downgrading of previous scholarship but, rightly, as a timely corrective to its dominant trajectory. -- Rob Burns * MONATSHEFTE *[T]his valuable volume manages to do precisely what it sets out to: emphasizing the 'Turkish' in 'Turkish-German' while also painting a more comprehensive picture of Ören and Özdamar within their respective German communities and providing a far more detailed account of the cultural exchange and interchange . . . between Turkey and Germany in the second half of the twentieth century. . . [A]n indispensable volume for anybody researching Turkish-German theater or literature in this period. * STUDIES IN 20TH- and 21ST-CENTURY LITERATURE *[A]n original, comprehensive, inclusive, and engaging contribution. . . . By drawing on original archival research and convincing close readings through a Brechtian lens, Gezen offers a whole new framework for transcultural and transnational literary analysis both within German studies and beyond. -- Steffen Kaupp * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *[P]ersuasively foregrounds the importance of theatre for our understanding of Turkish-German connections, and the work of Ören and Özdamar in particular. . . . [T]his book will be of interest to scholars and students working on Brecht's reception or on (Turkish-)German theatre and literature, and Gezen's translations and clear outline of Turkish politics make the . . . material under discussion accessible both to the majority of Germanists, who cannot read Turkish, and to English-speakers interested in transnational Theatre Studies. -- Joseph Twist * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *This incisive study demonstrates that just as Turkish-German encounters prove surprisingly key to expanding our grasp of Brechtian theater as practiced and theorized in cold-war Germany, Brechtian theater also proves key to revising our understanding of the aesthetics and history of Turkish-German culture in and beyond Germany. Ela E. Gezen dramatically rewrites the foundational literary history of an era, with stunning consequences for literary analysis today. - -- Leslie A. Adelson, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of German Studies, Cornell UniversityGezen's study demonstrates that the theater is a particularly productive lens through which to view Turkish-German (cultural) interchange. -- Paula Hanssen * COLLOQUIA GERMANICA *Table of ContentsIntroduction Intersections of Politics and Aesthetics: Bertolt Brecht in the Turkish Context Didactic Realism: Aras Ören and Working-Class Culture Staged Pasts: Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Dramatic Aesthetic Conclusion Bibliography Notes Index
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Renaissance Papers 2018
Book SynopsisSixty-fifth annual volume, focusing notably on Shakespearean drama and the poetry of early modern England but with essays on a variety of other topics relevant to the period. Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The 2018 volume features essays presented at the conference at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as essays submitted directly to the journal. The volume opens with four essays on Shakespearean drama, offering readings ranging from the heteroglossia in Henry VIII to the limits of language in King Lear, social networks in Anthony and Cleopatra, and epiphanic excursions in the Shakespearean corpus. The next essays look at iconology, agency, and alterity on the early modern stage and colonial Peruvian art. The journal then returns us to the poetry of early modern England. The first of this group explores the perils of poor reading in The Countess of Montgomery's Uriana and is followed by essays investigating the aesthetic connection between Spenser and Catullus and the sacred circularities in John Donne's "Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward." The volume concludes with an extended consideration of meritocracy and misogyny in the works of Ben Jonson. Contributors: Nathan Dixon, Lisandra Estevez, Melissa J. Rack, Robert Lanier Reid, Rachel M. De Smith Roberts, Deneen Senasi, Jonathon Shelley, Kendall Spillman, John Wall, and Don E. Wayne. The journal is edited by Jim Pearce of North Carolina Central University and Ward Risvold of the University of California, San Diego.Table of Contents"One Little Room, An Everywhere": Staging Silence in London's Blackfriars and Shakespeare's Henry VIII - Deneen M. Senasi "What they are yet I know not": Speech, Silence, and Meaning in King Lear - John N. Wall Shakespearean Epiphany - Robert Lanier Reid Between the "triple pillar" and "mutual pair": Love, Friendship, and Social Networks in Antony and Cleopatra - Jonathan Shelley "Beauty Changed to Ugly Whoredom": Analyzing the Mermaid Figure in The Changeling - Kendell Spillman Imagining the Other in a Cuzco Defense of the Eucharist - Lisandra Estevez A Critique of Poor Reading: Antissia's Madness in The Countess of Montgomery's Urania - Rachel M. De Smith Roberts "Thou thyself likewise art lyttle made": Spenser, Catullus, and the Aesthetics of "smale poemes" - Melissa J. Rack The ordo salutis: Sacred Circularities in John Donne's "Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward" - Nathan Dixon "Broken-Backed" Texts: Meritocracy and Misogyny in Ben Jonson's The Forrest - Don E. Wayne
£65.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Heinrich von Kleist: Literary and Philosophical
Book SynopsisWINNER of the 2023 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award Volume of new essays investigating Kleist's influences and sources both literary and philosophical, their role as paradigms, and the ways in which he responded to and often shattered them. Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) was a rebel who upset canonization by employing his predecessors and contemporaries as what Steven Howe calls "inspirational foils." It was precisely a keen awareness of literary and philosophical traditions that allowed Kleist to shatter prevailing paradigms. Though little is known about what specifically Kleist read, the frequent allusions in his enduringly modern oeuvre indicate fruitful dialogues with both canonical and marginal works of European literature, spanning antiquity (The Old Testament, Sophocles), the Early Modern Period (Shakespeare, De Zayas), the late Enlightenment (Wieland, Goethe, Schiller), and the first eleven years of the nineteenth century (Mereau, Brentano, Collin). Kleist's works also evidence encounters with his philosophical precursors and contemporaries, including the ancient Greeks (Aristotle) and representatives of all phases of Enlightenment thought (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Ferguson, Spalding, Fichte, Kant, Hegel), economic theories (Smith, Kraus), and developments in anthropology, sociology, and law. This volume of new essays sheds light on Kleist's relationship to his literary and philosophical influences and on their function as paradigms to which his writings respond.Trade ReviewSurprising, original, and eminently readable, this is an outstanding addition to serious scholarship about an author whose work is increasingly significant for contemporary readers. Highly recommended. * CHOICE MAGAZINE *Table of ContentsForeword: A Note on Kleist in American Art, Film, and Literature - Paul Michael Lützeler Acknowledgments Introduction: Kleist's Literary and Philosophical Paradigms = Jeffrey L. High, Rebecca Stewart, and Elaine Chen Part I. Kleist's Literary Paradigms In the Beginning: Kleist, Genesis, Kafka, and the Pursuit of Epistemological Salvation - Gail K. Hart Just Violence? War, Law, and Politics in Kleist's Die Herrmannsschlacht and Shakespeare's Henry V - Steven Howe The Mereau-Brentano Translations of María de Zayas's "Spanish Novellas" and Kleist's Prose Works - Jeffrey L. High and Lisa Beesley The Old and the New: Christoph Martin Wieland and Kleist on Parteigeist - John A. McCarthy Receptions, Homages, and Anti-Occupational Allegories of Autonomy: The Case of Schiller's Bohemian Cup and Kleist's Broken Jug - Jeffrey L. High and Elaine Chen Anti-Napoleonic Rage and the Hope for a Better Future: Collin between Schiller and Kleist - Rebecca Stewart Part II: Kleist's Philosophical Paradigms Fiat claritas et pereat opus: Equity and the Limits of Rectification in Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas - John T. Hamilton Kleist, Johann Joachim Spalding and the Bestimmung des Menschen: Philosophy as a Way of Life? - Laura Anna Macor War Games: Kleist, Adam Ferguson, and the Cultural Poetics of Play - Christian Moser Economic Concepts and Authorial Self-Design in Heinrich von Kleist's Letters - Johannes Endres Gender and the Politics of Recognition in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right and Kleist's Amphitryon - Bernd Fischer Kleist and Haiti - With and Beyond Hegel - Katrin Pahl Notes on the Contributors Index
£99.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Renaissance Papers 2020
Book SynopsisCollection of the best scholarly essays from the 2020 Southeastern Renaissance Conference plus essays submitted directly to the journal. Topics run from the epic to influence studies to the perennial problem of love and beyond. Renaissance Papers 2020 features essays from the conference held virtually at Mercer University, as well as essays submitted directly to the journal. The volume opens with an essay that discusses the "ultimate story," the epic, and argues, pointing to the Henriad and The Faerie Queen, that some of the most ambitious remain unfinished; an essay on "just war" and Henry V follows, suggesting why such epic inconclusion may not be such a bad thing. A trio of influence studies investigate post-Marian virginity, Miltonic environmentalism, and cross-dressing knights. Three essays then interrogate the perennial problem of love: in popular ballads, in Hero and Leander, and in The Rape of Lucrece. An essay argues counterintuitively for Amelia Lanyer and Margaret Cavendish as exemplars of the Cavalier Ideal of the Bonum Vitae; it is followed by an equally provocative reconsideration of the role of Claudio D'Arezzo's rhetorical works for Sicilian national identity. The last essay analyzes the formal signatures of three sixteenth-century queens and how they sought to represent themselves on the public stage.Table of ContentsPost-Marian Piety in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene: The Case of Belphoebe Jesse Russell Confessions and Obfuscations: Just War and Henry V Nathan P. Gilmour "Unfinished Epics: Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Henriad, and the Mystic Plenum" Robert Lanier Reid Translating and Fragmenting Nature in The Divine Weeks Kevin Chovanec "The beautifullest Creature living": Cross-dressing Knights in Mary Wroth's Urania and Margaret Tyler's Mirror of Princely Deeds Rachel M. De Smith Roberts "T'was I that Murdered thee": Heartbreak, Murder, and Justice in Early Modern Haunted Lovers' Ballads Savannah Jensen "Love at First Sight": The Narrator's Perspective in Marlowe's Hero and Leander John N. Wall Recentering the Forest in Early Modern England Nicholas Ciavarra "The house received all ornaments to grace it:" Cavendish, Lanyer, and the Cavalier Ideal of Bonum Vitae Margaret C. Sanders A Gentleman of Syracuse: Claudio Mario D'Arezzo and Sicilian Nationalism in the Early Modern Mediterranean Anne Maltempi Make Your Mark: Signatures of Queens Regnant in England and Scotland during the 16th Century Heather R. Darsie
£65.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Renaissance Papers 2021
Book SynopsisEssays on a wide range of topics including the role of early modern chess in upholding Aristotelian virtue; readings of Sidney, Wroth, Spenser, and Shakespeare; and several topics involving the New World. Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The present volume opens with an essay on early modern chess, arguing that it covertly upheld an Aristotelian concept of virtue against the destabilizing ethical views of writers such as Machiavelli. This provocative opening is followed by iconoclastic discussions of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Wroth's Urania, and Spenser's Fairie Queen. The next essay investigates the mystery surrounding editorship of the 1571 printing of The Mirror for Magistrates. The essays then pivot into the exotic world of Hermetic "statue magic" in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale and the even more exotic worlds of alchemy, Aztec war gods, and conversion in sixteenth-century Mexico. Two further essays remain in the New World, the first examining the representational connections between the twelve Caesars and the twelve Inca kings, the second taking stock of Thomas Harriot's contribution to the understanding of Amerindian languages. The penultimate essay looks at Holbein's depiction of Henry VIII's ailing body, and the volume concludes with a complex analysis of guilt and shame in Molière's L'École des Femmes. Contributors: Jean Marie Christensen, William Coulter, Christopher Crosbie, Shepherd Aaron Ellis, Scott Lucas, Fernando Martinez-Periset, Timothy Pyles, Rachel Roberts, Jesse Russell, Janet Stephens, Weiao Xing. The journal is edited by Jim Pearce of North Carolina Central University and Ward Risvold of Georgia College and State University.Table of Contents"Strange Serious Wantoning:": Early Modern Chess Manuals and the Ethics of Virtuous Subterfuge Christopher Crosbie "Both Use and Art:" Motifs and Method in Astrophil and Stella William A. Coulter Embodied Love(rs): Injury and Comedy in Mary Wroth's Urania Rachel M. De Smith Roberts Edmund Spenser's Automaton Alchemy: The Case of False Florimell Jesse Russell Who Edited the 1571 Mirror for Magistrates? Scott C. Lucas Statues Living and Conscious: Hermetic Statue-Magic in The Winter's Tale Timothy Pyles Transmutation and Refinement: The Metaphysics of Conversion and Alchemy in Renaissance Spain Shepherd Aaron Ellis The Twelve Inka and the Twelve Caesars: Reflections on an Early Modern Visual Theme in the Art of Colonial Peru Janet G. Stephens Linguistics and Epistemology in Thomas Harriot's North Atlantic World Weiao Xing Assembling the King's Body: Examining Holbein's Portrait Techniques and the Fashioning of Henry VIII's Image in the English Renaissance Jean Marie Christensen Molière's L'École des Femmes between Shame and Guilt Fernando Martinez-Periset
£66.50
Arc Humanities Press The Battle of the Bard: Shakespeare on US Radio
Book Synopsis
£91.74
Arc Humanities Press Jewish Theatre Making in Mantua, 1520–1650
Book Synopsis
£120.42
H.W. Wilson Publishing Co. Critical Insights: Othello
Book SynopsisOthello has long been considered (along with Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth) one of Shakespeare's four greatest works of tragedy. Recently, however, Othello has taken on a special interest, partly because it deals so intriguingly with such issues as gender, race, and class --issues particularly engaging to so many readers, critics, and playgoers. This volume explores Othello from numerous points of view, paying special attention to such matters as history, aesthetics, and various important productions, especially on film.
£83.20
University of South Carolina Press Understanding David Mamet: With a New Preface
Book SynopsisA new preface covers Mamet's most recent plays and nonfiction writingUnderstanding David Mamet analyzes the broad range of David Mamet's plays and places them in the context of his career as a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction prose, as well as drama. In addition to playwriting and directing for the theater, Mamet also writes, directs, and produces for film and television, and he writes essays, fiction, poetry, and even children's books. Author Brenda Murphy centers her discussion around Mamet's most significant plays—Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna, American Buffalo, Speed-the-Plow, The Cryptogram, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Edmond, The Woods, Lakeboat, Boston Marriage, and The Duck Variations—as well as his three novels—The Village, The Old Religion, and Wilson. Murphy also notes how Mamet's one-act and less known plays provide important context for the major plays and help to give a fuller sense of the scope of his art. In her new preface, Murphy provides an overview of Mamet's plays, fiction, and essays in the 2010s and the continued move to the right in his political and cultural thinking.
£17.06
University of Delaware Press Shakespeare's Folktale Sources
Book SynopsisShakespeare’s Folktale Sources argues that seven plays—The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline—derive one or more of their plots directly from folktales. In most cases, scholars have accepted one literary version of the folktale as a source. Recognizing that the same story has circulated orally and occurs in other medieval and early modern written versions allows for new readings of the plays. By acknowledging that a play’s source story circulated in multiple forms, we can see how the playwright was engaging his audience on common ground, retelling a story that may have been familiar to many of them, even the illiterate. We can also view the folktale play as a Shakespearean genre, defined by source as the chronicle histories are, that spans and traces the course of Shakespeare’s career. The fact that Shakespeare reworked folktales so frequently also changes the way we see the history of the literary folk- or fairy-tale, which is usually thought to bypass England and move from Italian novella collections to eighteenth-century French salons. Each chapter concludes with a bibliography listing versions of each folktale source as a resource for further research and teaching. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
£37.40
Iter Press The Faithful Virgins: Volume 104
Book SynopsisThe first-ever print edition of a play by one of the first women playwrights in England. E. Polwhele (c. 1651-c. 1691) was one of the first women to write for the stage in Restoration London. This book presents the first printed edition of Polwhele’s first play, The Faithful Virgins, which until now has existed only in an unsigned manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. A tragicomedy apparently performed in London by the Duke's Company ca. 1669–1671, The Faithful Virgins is altogether different in tone from Polwhele's later, better-known prose comedy, The Frolicks; or, The Lawyer Cheated (1671). The introduction to this modern-spelling edition of The Faithful Virgins discusses the play in terms of radical changes in English stage practices following the restoration of the monarchy after England’s civil war and situates Polwhele’s play within the social and political life of seventeenth-century London. Trade Review"This fine volume makes available a play long overlooked in Restoration drama studies: Polwhele’s The Faithful Virgins (ca. 1669–1671). Ann Hollinshead Hurley’s informative introduction and carefully edited text disclose Polwhele’s imaginative response to rapidly changing theatrical tastes in the1660s. The stage directions show Polwhele skillfully using the spectacular effects of which Restoration stagecraft was capable, while the text reveals a fascinating mélange of dramatic forms. The Faithful Virgins marries in a singular manner tragicomedy to masque and includes a dumb show, proving once again, that the phrase “Restoration drama” is by no means synonymous with comedy of manners. The editor’s introduction also provides for scholars and students alike useful information on the Restoration stage, in addition to making available the most thorough biographical material on Polwhele to date." -- Deborah C. Payne, Professor of Literature, American UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Illustrations Abbreviations INTRODUCTION THE FAITHFUL VIRGINS APPENDIX: Title page: The Gentlewomans Companion; or, a GUIDE to the FEMALE SEX On His ROYAL HIGHNESS: His Expedition against the DUTCH Bibliography Index
£34.20
Texas Review Press Five Conversations About Peter Sellers: Hybrid
Book SynopsisFive Conversations About Peter Sellers is an essay that begins as an exploration of the author’s burgeoning obsession with Peter Sellers, and specifically his role in hijacking and derailing production of the spy spoof, Casino Royale, in the late 60s. But what begins as a reported piece on how the film set erupted into chaos, quickly devolves into its own chaos as the essay splits into 5 different narrators, each with their own idea of what the essay is actually about. Is it about how Peter Sellers and his oversize ego ruined Casino Royale? Is it about how society has too long allowed horrible men to run the world? Is it an exploration of the nature of the essay as a creative form? Or is Peter Sellers and his genius at impersonation actually a vehicle through which the author probes her own shifting identity as a bi-ethnic person? The answer is...yes. From Five Conversations About Peter SellersBeth: There’s a passage in Notes from Underground where the narrator speaks about the perverse pleasure of knowing your own vileness. ‘This pleasure comes precisely from the sharpest awareness of your own degradation; from the knowledge that you have gone to the utmost limit; that it is despicable, yet can’t be otherwise, that you no longer have any way out, that you will never become a different man.’ Build all the utopias you want, but some people can only know they’re alive when they’ve destroyed everything beautiful around them.
£15.26
Academica Press Approaches to the Contemporary American Theatre
Book SynopsisIn this engaging study, theatre scholar Robert J. Andreach argues, in what will be his final book, that the contemporary American theatre merits appreciation for dramatizing experiences in genres that jostle the audience into thinking about the experiences in new ways, based on five units of analysis: the naturalistic play, modernist theatre, trilogies, tragedy, and comedy. Andreach’s insights maintain that familiarity with these five units should stimulate thinking about the experiences and what they reveal about contemporary American life and the ways in which the theatre can dramatize that life.
£120.00
Academica Press Shakespeare & Jung - The God in Time: Meditations
Book SynopsisIn Shakespeare and Jung - The God in Time literary critic and philosopher James Driscoll presents original arguments for the existence and nature of God. He traverses the boundaries of art, philosophy, psychology, and religion to draw on Shakespeare, Carl Jung, and A. N. Whitehead to define and illuminate the interconnections of God and time.Time’s irreversibility and continuous creation of novelty makes it the medium and engine of order, value, and meaning. Time connects and differentiates all, thereby making reality relational and allowing for feeling, thought, art, and science. Shakespeare, the writer with the greatest insight into human nature, dramatized the primacy of time in our lives. Time is the de facto God of Shakespeare’s worlds. Shakespeare anticipated our own age when time began to displace eternity as the ground of reality. Jung gave us a new map of the psyche and terminology to explore more deeply the human condition, bound as it is in time, and the nature of deity. Driscoll carries Jung’s insights further into the three paradigmatic revelations of the Western Godhead: The Book of Job, the Gospels, and Shakespeare’s King Lear. Shakespeare the artist grasped the dynamics of the Western Godhead giving us a singular revelation of its dominant archetypes, Yahweh, Job, Prometheus, and Christ.The archetypes of the Western Godhead shaped the development of art, science, and technology and energized the ideals of progress and freedom. The West advanced rapidly in science, the arts, and human rights because of the unique archetypal dynamics of its God in Time.
£85.60
H.W. Wilson Publishing Co. Romeo and Juliet
Book SynopsisIn-depth critical discussions of William Shakespeare's play - Plus complimentary, unlimited online access to the full content of this great literary reference.Romeo and Juliet examines many aspects of Shakespeare's classic tale of star-crossed lovers including the history of the play's criticism, issues of confession, trauma and uses of the imagination. Essays on film adaptations and parodies as well as pluralistic appraoches to the balcony scene are also included.Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources: About This Volume Critical Context: Original Introductory Essays Critical Readings: Original In-Depth Essays Further Readings Detailed Bibliography Detailed Bio of the Editor General Subject Index
£88.40
Bucknell University Press,U.S. Odysseys of Recognition: Performing
Book SynopsisLiterary recognition is a technical term for a climactic plot device. Odysseys of Recognition claims that interpersonal recognition is constituted by performance, and brings performance theory into dialogue with poetics, politics, and philosophy. By observing Odysseus figures from Homer to Kleist, Ellwood Wiggins offers an alternative to conventional intellectual histories that situate the invention of the interior self in modernity. Through strategic readings of Aristotle, this elegantly written, innovative study recovers an understanding of interpersonal recognition that has become strange and counterintuitive. Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey offers a model for agency in ethical knowledge that has a lot to teach us today. Early modern and eighteenth-century characters, meanwhile, discover themselves not deep within an impenetrable self, but in the interpersonal space between people in the world. Recognition, Wiggins contends, is the moment in which epistemology and ethics coincide: in which what we know becomes manifest in what we do. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Trade Review"This is an intelligent, serious, patient, and innovative work. It is also beautifully written: nimble, unaffected, crystal-clear, and often entertaining." -- Nicholas Rennie * Rutgers University *"Poised between literary studies, philosophy, and political theory, the elegant Odysseys of Recognition will be of interest to a broad range of scholars. Scholars of the Goethezeit will find much to contemplate, as will classicists and philosophers." * Goethe Yearbook *"To take Wiggins at his word, the varied recognitions that result from his painstaking analyses are both decisively conclusive and tantalizingly openended. The point is to learn to be amenable to change in all its potentiality— that is, without settling for a substantial conclusion that would preclude further modification. In this way Wiggins’s assiduous brand of literary criticism acquires ethical urgency. As he beautifully formulates it, given the temporal nature of intersubjective, performative relations, any conclusion “is never fully commensurate with or explanatory of the living complexity of another human." * Modern Language Quarterly *"Wiggins’s monograph solicits and breaks ground for further readings in and beyond the texts he addresses. For whether it is a question of the most often cited texts of antiquity, their reinventions in the renaissance, or their adaptations in Weimar Classicism, and romanticism, Wiggins’s interventions will have altered what it means to come to know them." * The German Quarterly *"Ellwood Wiggins has produced a learned and thoughtful study of Aristotelian anagnorisis and its applicability to literary texts from Homer to Kleist." * German Studies Review *"This is an intelligent, serious, patient, and innovative work. It is also beautifully written: nimble, unaffected, crystal-clear, and often entertaining." -- Nicholas Rennie * Rutgers University *"Poised between literary studies, philosophy, and political theory, the elegant Odysseys of Recognition will be of interest to a broad range of scholars. Scholars of the Goethezeit will find much to contemplate, as will classicists and philosophers." * Goethe Yearbook *"To take Wiggins at his word, the varied recognitions that result from his painstaking analyses are both decisively conclusive and tantalizingly openended. The point is to learn to be amenable to change in all its potentiality— that is, without settling for a substantial conclusion that would preclude further modification. In this way Wiggins’s assiduous brand of literary criticism acquires ethical urgency. As he beautifully formulates it, given the temporal nature of intersubjective, performative relations, any conclusion “is never fully commensurate with or explanatory of the living complexity of another human." * Modern Language Quarterly *"Wiggins’s monograph solicits and breaks ground for further readings in and beyond the texts he addresses. For whether it is a question of the most often cited texts of antiquity, their reinventions in the renaissance, or their adaptations in Weimar Classicism, and romanticism, Wiggins’s interventions will have altered what it means to come to know them." * The German Quarterly *"Ellwood Wiggins has produced a learned and thoughtful study of Aristotelian anagnorisis and its applicability to literary texts from Homer to Kleist." * German Studies Review *Table of Contents Overview of Contents ... viiIllustrations ... viiiAbbreviations ... ixA Note on Translations and Orthography ... xi Introduction: Performing Recognition ... 1 Interiority Illusion Instantaneousness Illusion Recognition as Performance Aims and Scope of Readings Part I. Marking the Limits of Recognition: Between Aristotle and the Odyssey ... 31 1 “Just as the name itself signifies”: Under the Sign of Recognition ... 37 Nostalgia and Recognition Recognitions in Mycenae and Sparta Nostalgic Recognition and Epic Afterness Self-signification and the Nostalgia of Semiotics 2 “Recognition is a change”: Performance in Motion ... 84 Rhapsodic Mimesis and Narration Change in Aristotle’s Physics and Poetics Crying for Show in the Odyssey Recognition in Performance Theory and Moral Philosophy 3 “From ignorance to knowledge”: Penelope’s Poetological Epistemology ... 131 Penelopean Epistemology (Reading Penelope) Penelopean Poetics (Penelope Reading) 4 “Into friendship or enmity”: An Ethics of Authentic Deception ... 164 5 “For those bound for good or bad fortune”: Casualties of Recognition ... 193 Part II. Outing Interiority: Modern Recognitions ... 211 6 Self-Knowledge Between Plato and Shakespeare: Alcibiades and Troilus and Cressida ... 218 Philosophy or Theater? Mirrored Dramatic Structures Mirrored Selves 7 Metamorphoses of Recognition: Goethe’s “Fortunate Event” ... 248 “Glückliches Ereignis” as Anagnorisis Scene Recognizing Action: Visualizing Stories Recognizing Things: Experiencing Ideas Recognizing People: Moving Tableaux 8 Epistemologies of Recognition: Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris and the Spectacle of Catharsis ... 292 Spirals of Intertextual Performance Intertextual Intersubjectivity Intertextual Spectacle The Effects of Tragedy 9 Politics of Recognition: Friends, Enemies, and Goethe’s Iphigenie ... 324 Between Recognition and Acknowledgement The Exception of Friendship The Promise of Politics 10 The Fate of Recognition: Kleist’s Penthesilea ... 361 The Mirrored Gaze Plays within Plays Concluding Reflections: Signifying Silence in Blumenberg and Kafka ... 403Acknowledgements ... 417Bibliography ... 421Index ... 448About the Author ... 449
£107.20
Bucknell University Press,U.S. Faust: A Tragedy, Part I
Book SynopsisGoethe is the most famous German author, and the poetic drama Faust, Part I (1808) is his best-known work, one that stands in the company of other leading canonical works of European literature such as Dante’s Inferno and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This is the first new translation into English since David Constantine’s 2005 version. Why another translation when there are several currently in print? To invoke Goethe’s own authority when speaking of his favorite author, Shakespeare, Goethe asserts that so much has already been said about the poet-dramatist “that it would seem there’s nothing left to say,” but adds, “yet it is the peculiar attribute of the spirit that it constantly motivates the spirit.” Goethe’s great dramatic poem continues to speak to us in new ways as we and our world continually change, and thus a new or updated translation is always necessary to bring to light Faust’s almost inexhaustible, mysterious, and enchanting poetic and cultural power. Eugene Stelzig’s new translation renders the text of the play in clear and crisp English for a contemporary undergraduate audience while at the same time maintaining its leading poetic features, including the use of rhyme. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Trade ReviewStelzig's translation is an excellent and unusually accessible introduction to Goethe's text for college students. Its dramatic prose with occasional rhyme catches the basic tone of Goethe's play and loosely follows the lineation of the original. Accurate and clear enough to stand on its own with minimal annotation, lively enough to keep students reading and to read aloud in class, it is a superb choice for world literature courses or for departmental courses in translation. -- Jane K. Brown * University of Washington *This exciting new translation of Goethe’s Faust brings the text to life for a contemporary audience. Stelzig’s 'flexible' approach to poetic translation is eminently successful: the complexity of the text is allowed to emerge without completely sacrificing its poetry. I highly recommend it--especially for the classroom and first-time English readers of Faust. -- Astrida Tantillo * University of Illinois at Chicago *"The renewing potential of translation—indeed, of any act of cultural transmission—lies at the heart of so many of Goethe’s works, and Stelzig has succeeded in crafting a vibrant English version of this masterpiece." * Eighteenth-Century Studies *"This translation successfully captures the power of the text and maintains, as best as possible, fidelity to the original, even as the author has made many choices to produce a readable and quite modern Faust." * The Wordsworth Circle *"Stelzig’s translation succeeds in establishing this desired rapport between Goethe’s German text and English-speaking readers of the twenty-first century. By using contemporary but not overly colloquial language, by conveying some of the range of Goethe’s explicit and implicit meaning, and by creating a text with sonorous, poetic qualities, Stelzig has produced a translation that will make Goethe’s work accessible to a range of readers. It would certainly be appropriate for undergraduate literature courses; the scholarly apparatus (introduction and notes) is informative without being pedantic. The translation would, I think, also lend itself to use in theatrical performances." * European Romantic Review *"Stelzig has provided a solid, readable text of Faust I that should remain enjoyable and useful for a long while." * Goethe Yearbook *Stelzig's translation is an excellent and unusually accessible introduction to Goethe's text for college students. Its dramatic prose with occasional rhyme catches the basic tone of Goethe's play and loosely follows the lineation of the original. Accurate and clear enough to stand on its own with minimal annotation, lively enough to keep students reading and to read aloud in class, it is a superb choice for world literature courses or for departmental courses in translation. -- Jane K. Brown * University of Washington *This exciting new translation of Goethe’s Faust brings the text to life for a contemporary audience. Stelzig’s 'flexible' approach to poetic translation is eminently successful: the complexity of the text is allowed to emerge without completely sacrificing its poetry. I highly recommend it--especially for the classroom and first-time English readers of Faust. -- Astrida Tantillo * University of Illinois at Chicago *"The renewing potential of translation—indeed, of any act of cultural transmission—lies at the heart of so many of Goethe’s works, and Stelzig has succeeded in crafting a vibrant English version of this masterpiece." * Eighteenth-Century Studies *"This translation successfully captures the power of the text and maintains, as best as possible, fidelity to the original, even as the author has made many choices to produce a readable and quite modern Faust." * The Wordsworth Circle *"Stelzig’s translation succeeds in establishing this desired rapport between Goethe’s German text and English-speaking readers of the twenty-first century. By using contemporary but not overly colloquial language, by conveying some of the range of Goethe’s explicit and implicit meaning, and by creating a text with sonorous, poetic qualities, Stelzig has produced a translation that will make Goethe’s work accessible to a range of readers. It would certainly be appropriate for undergraduate literature courses; the scholarly apparatus (introduction and notes) is informative without being pedantic. The translation would, I think, also lend itself to use in theatrical performances." * European Romantic Review *"Stelzig has provided a solid, readable text of Faust I that should remain enjoyable and useful for a long while." * Goethe Yearbook *Table of ContentsTranslator’s Note IntroductionFAUST, PART I Further Reading Contemporary English Translations of Faust, Part I Acknowledgements Authorial Note
£34.20
Bucknell University Press,U.S. The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the
Book Synopsis2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Marcie Frank’s study traces the migration of tragicomedy, the comedy of manners, and melodrama from the stage to the novel, offering a dramatic new approach to the history of the English novel that examines how the collaboration of genres contributed to the novel’s narrative form and to the modern organization of literature. Drawing on media theory and focusing on the less-examined narrative contributions of such authors as Aphra Behn, Frances Burney, and Elizabeth Inchbald, alongside those of Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Jane Austen, The Novel Stage tells the story of the novel as it was shaped by the stage. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Trade Review“This interesting study explores the ways in which novels borrow from and develop theatrical conventions and forms during the eighteenth century. Examining a spectrum of practices, Frank explores the complex relationships between genre and form and offers new insights into the relationship between eighteenth-century theatre and literature.”— Helen Brooks, author of Actresses, Gender and the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Playing Women “The Novel Stage is an engaging and provocative text; its major insights about the key role of the repertory in eighteenth-century reading habits and the collaborations between theatre and fiction are bracing and of wide-ranging use.” — Manushug Powell, author of Performing Authorship in Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals "Frank’s emphasis on generic and media fluidity and interrogation of fixed mindsets around them are, to use one of the words she unpacks in Burney’s novels, provocative; I can certainly see why The Novel Stage was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title....Frank’s work is excellent at pointing towards new, interdisciplinary approaches to important discussions of genre and form."— Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature "An important and long-overdue consideration of the relationship between the theater and the novel in the long 18th century, The Novel Stage treats major Restoration and 18th-century dramatic forms—tragicomedy, comedy of manners, and melodrama—as they abandon the stage to take up residence in prose fiction. Essential."— ChoiceTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface: The Novel Stage Chapter 1: Genre, Media, and the Theory of the Novel Chapter 2: The Reform of the Rake from Rochester to Inchbald Chapter 3: Performing Reading in Richardson and Fielding Chapter 4: The Promise of Embarrassment: Frances Burney’s Theater of Shame Chapter 5: Melodrama in Inchbald and Austen Coda: The Melodramatic Address Acknowledgements Bibliography
£28.90
Bucknell University Press,U.S. Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives,
Book SynopsisWe are inundated with game play today. Digital devices offer opportunities to play almost anywhere and anytime. No matter our age, gender, social, cultural, or educational background—we play. Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800 is the first book-length work to explore how the modern discourse of play was first shaped during this pivotal period (approximately 1770-1830). The eleven chapters illuminate critical developments in the philosophy, pedagogy, psychology, politics, and poetics of play as evident in the work of major authors of the period including Lessing, Goethe, Kant, Schiller, Pestalozzi, Jacobi, Tieck, Jean Paul, Schleiermacher, and Fröbel. While drawing on more recent theories of play by thinkers such as Jean Piaget, Donald Winnicott, Jost Trier, Gregory Bateson, Jacques Derrida, Thomas Henricks, and Patrick Jagoda, the volume shows the debates around play in German letters of this period to be far richer and more complex than previously thought, as well as more relevant for our current engagement with play. Indeed, modern debates about what constitutes good rather than bad practices of play can be traced to these foundational discourses. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Trade Review"Play in the Age of Goethe is a brilliantly conceived and edited volume that explores the topic of "play" with a view to both its historical development and its contemporary importance. While canonical authors receive their due, the essays likewise address domains of research not usually treated in literary historical studies. Theory and practice are skillfully blended and the various perspectives represented in the essays are mutually enhancing. The contributions fully realize the intention of the volume to make clear how rich and various, how intellectually compelling and fecund the thoughts about and fictional treatments of play in the German-speaking lands at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries in fact were." -- David E. Wellbery * author of The Specular Moment: Goethe’s Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism *"This is a superb collection of essays on a topic of central interest to scholars of eighteenth-century literature and culture, as well as students of continental philosophy and theoreticians of play. The introduction is lively and intriguing, setting the stage for the essays to come and maintaining interest via a very concise, yet wide-ranging account of the importance of play and games in contemporary life and what is at stake in the practice." -- Gail K. Hart * author of Friedrich Schiller: Crime, Aesthetic, and the Poetics of Punishment *"This collection's strength is evident in the care each author takes with the theme, material, and development of what amount to multiple interlocking frameworks for understanding play circa 1800." * Monatshefte *“[Play in the Age of Goethe] is another impressive work in the series New Studies in the Age of Goethe and clearly demonstrates the productivity of scholars in the field and their many interdisciplinary connections.” * Goethe Yearbook, 2023 *"This is a superb collection of essays on a topic of central interest to scholars of eighteenth-century literature and culture, as well as students of continental philosophy and theoreticians of play. The introduction is lively and intriguing, setting the stage for the essays to come and maintaining interest via a very concise, yet wide-ranging account of the importance of play and games in contemporary life and what is at stake in the practice." -- Gail K. Hart * author of Friedrich Schiller: Crime, Aesthetic, and the Poetics of Punishment *"This collection's strength is evident in the care each author takes with the theme, material, and development of what amount to multiple interlocking frameworks for understanding play circa 1800." * Monatshefte *"Play in the Age of Goethe is a brilliantly conceived and edited volume that explores the topic of 'play' with a view to both its historical development and its contemporary importance. While canonical authors receive their due, the essays likewise address domains of research not usually treated in literary historical studies. Theory and practice are skillfully blended and the various perspectives represented in the essays are mutually enhancing. The contributions fully realize the intention of the volume to make clear how rich and various, how intellectually compelling and fecund the thoughts about and fictional treatments of play in the German-speaking lands at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries in fact were." -- David E. Wellbery * author of The Specular Moment: Goethe’s Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism *Table of Contents List of Illustrations Introduction: Play in the Age of Goethe and Today Part 1: Free Play Chapter 1: Beauty and Erotic Play: Anacreontic Poetry’s Transformation of Aesthetic Philosophy Christian P. Weber Chapter 2: Free Play in German Idealism and Poststructuralism Samuel Heidepriem Part 2: Games of Chance Chapter 3: “Mit dem Spiele spielen”: Lessing’s Play for Tolerance Edgar Landgraf Chapter 4: Play with Memory and Its Topoi: Faust Nicholas Rennie Part 3: Children’s Play Chapter 5: Narcissus at Play: Goethe, Piaget, and the Passage from Egocentric to Social Play Elliott Schreiber Chapter 6: Playthings: Goethe’s Favorite Toys Patricia Anne Simpson Chapter 7: Kindergarten and the Pedagogy of Play in the German Educational Revolution Ian F. McNeely Interlude Chapter 8: Invective, Eulogy, Play: Jacobi’s Sock 1799 Christiane Frey Part 4: The Play of Language Chapter 9: Between Speaking and Listening: Jean Paul’s Word-Play Michael Powers Chapter 10: Authorship, Translation, Play: Schleiermacher’s Metalangual Poetics David Martyn Chapter 11: Playing with Words in Early German Romanticism Brian Tucker Acknowledgments Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index
£107.20
Bucknell University Press,U.S. Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France
Book SynopsisCollecting diverse critical perspectives on the topic of play—from dolls, bilboquets, and lotteries, to writing itself—this volume offers new insights into how play was used to represent and reimagine the world in eighteenth-century France. In documenting various modes of play, contributors theorize its relation to law, religion, politics, and economics. Equally important was the role of “play” in plays, and the function of theatrical performance in mirroring, and often contesting, our place in the universe. These essays remind us that the spirit of play was very much alive during the “Age of Reason,” providing ways for its practitioners to consider more “serious” themes such as free will and determinism, illusions and equivocations, or chance and inequality. Standing at the intersection of multiple intellectual avenues, this is the first comprehensive study in English devoted to the different guises of play in Enlightenment France, certain to interest curious readers across disciplinary backgrounds.Trade Review"Bringing together game studies and 18th-century French studies, Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France is a most welcome contribution to the study of French literature, history, and culture. The collection introduces us to understudied works and provides fresh approaches to canonical texts, broadening our understanding of the interaction between play, culture, and politics." -- Tracy Rutler * co-creator of Legacies of the Enlightenment *"An enjoyable and stimulating collection, this volume will be of much interest to students and scholars alike. It will undoubtedly spur new scholarly work on the history of play which, as the editors and contributors so convincingly show, is no trivial matter." -- Gemma Tidman * H-France Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction Fayçal Falaky and Reginald McGinnis 1 Playing with Dolls in Old Regime Fairy Tales Rori Bloom 2 The Morality of Bilboquet, or the Equivocations of Language Jean-Alexandre Perras 3 Fiction as Play: Rhetorical Subversion in Alain-René Lesage’s Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane Zeina Hakim 4 Playthings of Fortune: Lots, Games of Chance, and Inequality in l’Abbé Prévost Masano Yamashita 5 Boundless Play and Infinite Pleasure in the Chevalier de Béthune’s Relation du monde de Mercure Erika Mandarino 6 The Politics of Orientalist Fantasy in French Opera Katharine Hargrave 7 Playing at Theater: Modes of Play in Théâtre de Société Maria Teodora Comsa 8 Between Play and Ritual: Profane Masquerade in the French Revolution Annelle Curulla 9 The Return of Play, or the End of Revolutionary Theater Yann Robert 10 Video Games as Cultural History: Procedural Narrative and the Eighteenth-Century Fair Theater Jeffrey M. Leichman Acknowledgments Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index
£32.30
Bucknell University Press,U.S. Space, Drama, and Empire: Mapping the Past in
Book SynopsisSpanish poet, playwright, and novelist Félix Lope de Vega (1562–1635) was a key figure of Golden Age Spanish literature, second only in stature to Cervantes, and is considered the founder of Spain’s classical theater. In this rich and informative study, Javier Lorenzo investigates the symbolic use of space in Lope’s drama and its function as an ideological tool to promote an imagined Spanish national past. In specific plays, this book argues, historical landscapes and settings were used to foretell and legitimize the imperial present in Hapsburg Spain, allowing audiences to visualize and plot, as on a map, the country’s expansionist trajectory throughout the centuries. By focusing on connections among space, drama, and empire, this book makes an important contribution to the study of literature and imperialism in early modern Spain and equally to our understanding of the role and political significance of spatiality in Siglo de Oro comedia.Trade Review“A fascinating and original study of space showing how theater has the unique potential to function as the ultimate vehicle to explore and, more importantly, complicate matters of our past.”— Esther Fernández, author of To Embody the Marvelous: The Making of Illusions in Early Modern Spain “Lorenzo offers a wealth of insights to better understand a corpus of plays that Lope de Vega devised from the heights of artistic sophistication and popular acclaim. Lorenzo’s vivid, clear analysis retraces Lope’s steps as he reworks chronicles, myths, and maps depicting Iberia’s patchwork medieval realms for his own times, with a keen eye and well-tuned ear on the imperatives of Spain’s diverse, far-flung empire. Space, Drama, and Empire is a boon for scholars and students alike.”— Elizabeth Wright, author of The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain “An eye-opening examination of Golden Age theater focusing on how Lope de Vegas’s plays use symbolic and ideological space, prefigure an imperial present (and future), and legitimize imperial expansion and territorial appropriation.”— Antonio Sánchez Jiménez, author of Lope: El verso y la vida “Lorenzo’s analysis of the representation of geographical space in Lope’s historical dramas provides compelling new insights concerning the reconfiguration of iconic episodes from Spain’s medieval past as imperial or proto-imperial episodes. Of particular interest is the way that Lorenzo identifies absolutist and imperialist undertones in plays that feature the peripheral provincial settings of Galicia, Asturias, and Las Canarias as prefigurations of early modern colonialism.”— Barbara Simerka, author of Knowing Subjects: Cognitive Cultural Studies and Early Modern Spanish LiteratureTable of ContentsList of Illustrations A Note on Translations Introduction Space and the Imperial Appropriation of the Past in the Lopian comedia “Que los reyes nunca están lejos”: Empire and Metatheatricality in El mejor alcalde, el rey Born to Expand: Space, Figura, and Empire in Las famosas asturianas Endangered from Within: Space and Difference in Las paces de los reyesy judía de Toledo Atlantic Conquests, Transatlantic Echoes: Space, Gender, and Dietetics in Los guanches de Tenerife y conquista de Canaria Conclusion Acknowledgments Bibliography Index
£32.30
Bucknell University Press,U.S. Space, Drama, and Empire: Mapping the Past in
Book SynopsisSpanish poet, playwright, and novelist Félix Lope de Vega (1562–1635) was a key figure of Golden Age Spanish literature, second only in stature to Cervantes, and is considered the founder of Spain’s classical theater. In this rich and informative study, Javier Lorenzo investigates the symbolic use of space in Lope’s drama and its function as an ideological tool to promote an imagined Spanish national past. In specific plays, this book argues, historical landscapes and settings were used to foretell and legitimize the imperial present in Hapsburg Spain, allowing audiences to visualize and plot, as on a map, the country’s expansionist trajectory throughout the centuries. By focusing on connections among space, drama, and empire, this book makes an important contribution to the study of literature and imperialism in early modern Spain and equally to our understanding of the role and political significance of spatiality in Siglo de Oro comedia.Trade Review“A fascinating and original study of space showing how theater has the unique potential to function as the ultimate vehicle to explore and, more importantly, complicate matters of our past.”— Esther Fernández, author of To Embody the Marvelous: The Making of Illusions in Early Modern Spain “Lorenzo offers a wealth of insights to better understand a corpus of plays that Lope de Vega devised from the heights of artistic sophistication and popular acclaim. Lorenzo’s vivid, clear analysis retraces Lope’s steps as he reworks chronicles, myths, and maps depicting Iberia’s patchwork medieval realms for his own times, with a keen eye and well-tuned ear on the imperatives of Spain’s diverse, far-flung empire. Space, Drama, and Empire is a boon for scholars and students alike.”— Elizabeth Wright, author of The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain “An eye-opening examination of Golden Age theater focusing on how Lope de Vegas’s plays use symbolic and ideological space, prefigure an imperial present (and future), and legitimize imperial expansion and territorial appropriation.”— Antonio Sánchez Jiménez, author of Lope: El verso y la vida “Lorenzo’s analysis of the representation of geographical space in Lope’s historical dramas provides compelling new insights concerning the reconfiguration of iconic episodes from Spain’s medieval past as imperial or proto-imperial episodes. Of particular interest is the way that Lorenzo identifies absolutist and imperialist undertones in plays that feature the peripheral provincial settings of Galicia, Asturias, and Las Canarias as prefigurations of early modern colonialism.”— Barbara Simerka, author of Knowing Subjects: Cognitive Cultural Studies and Early Modern Spanish LiteratureTable of ContentsList of Illustrations A Note on Translations Introduction Space and the Imperial Appropriation of the Past in the Lopian comedia “Que los reyes nunca están lejos”: Empire and Metatheatricality in El mejor alcalde, el rey Born to Expand: Space, Figura, and Empire in Las famosas asturianas Endangered from Within: Space and Difference in Las paces de los reyesy judía de Toledo Atlantic Conquests, Transatlantic Echoes: Space, Gender, and Dietetics in Los guanches de Tenerife y conquista de Canaria Conclusion Acknowledgments Bibliography Index
£107.20
Wilfrid Laurier University Press Reliving the Trenches: Memory Plays by Veterans
Book SynopsisIn Reliving the Trenches, three plays written by returned soldiers who served in the Great War with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium appear in print for the first time. With a critical introduction that references the author's service files to establish the plays as memoirs, these plays are an important addition to Canadian literature of the Great War.Important but overlooked war memoirs that relive trench life and warfare as experienced by combat veterans, the three plays include The P.B.I., written and staged in 1920 by recently returned veterans at the University of Toronto. Parts of this play appeared in print in serial form in 1922. Glory Hole, written in 1929 by William Stabler Atkinson, and Dawn in Heaven, written and staged in Winnipeg in 1934 by Simon Jauvoish, have never been published. These plays impact Canadian literature and theatre history by revealing a body of previously unknown modernist writing, and they impact life writing studies by showing how memoirs can be concealed behind genre conventions. They offer fascinating details of the daily routines of the soldiers in the trenches by bringing them back to life in theatrical re-enactment.Table of Contents 1. Critical and Historical Introduction 2. Editorial Principles 3. Introduction to The P.B.I. 5. The P. B. I., or, Mademoiselle of Bully Grenay by H. B. Scudamore, H.W. Downie W.L. McGeary and H.R. Dillon 6. Introduction to Glory Hole 7. Glory Hole: A Play of 1914-18 by William Stabler Atkinson 8. Introduction to Dawn In Heaven 9. Dawn In Heaven by Simon Jauvoish Appendix One: The P.B.I. Program Appendix Two: War Service of The P.B.I. Authors and Cast Appendix Three: 'A Canadian Volunteer's Last Prayer,' a poem by Simon Jauvoish Works Cited
£69.30
Wits University Press Mooi Street and Other Moves
Book SynopsisThis collection of six plays by one of South Africa’s leading playwrights and actors features works written between 1984 and 1993. Slabolepszy is a master of dialogue, capturing the essence of the personality and speech patterns of his protagonists in language that is often dramatic, frequently funny, sometimes tragic and always entertaining.The works included are Under the Oaks, Over the Hill, Boo to the Moon, Smallholding, Mooi Street Moves and The Return of Elvis du Pisanie.Elvis won Slabolespzy the 1992/93 IGI Life Vita Award for Play of the Year and, together with Mooi Street Moves, gained him the Vita Playwright of the Year award.This collection is introduced by Robert Greig, a well-known theatre critic, and by Bobby Heaney, who has been involved in the evolution of several of Slabolepszy’s plays.Table of ContentsGlossary Introduction - Robert Greig Bringing Page to Stage – Bobby Heaney Under the Oaks Over the Hill Boo to the Moon Smallholding Mooi Street Moves The Return of Elvis du Pisanie
£23.42
Liverpool University Press The Granny and the Heist / La estanquera de
Book SynopsisPart comedy, part thriller, part social critique, The Granny and the Heist (La estanquera de Vallecas) is the play with which José Luis Alonso de Santos reinvigorated the Spanish stage during a period of uncertainty upon the death of Francisco Franco and the end of theatre censorship. Premiered in 1981, it established Alonso de Santos as the most important playwright in Spain at a time when the country was emerging from decades of relative isolation from the rest of Europe.Set in a working class area of Madrid, the play tells the story of Leandro and Tocho, two out of work builders whose plan to rob a tobacconists goes awry due to the refusal of its owner, feisty grandmother Justa, to hand over the money. Barricading themselves in the shop as the forces of order arrive, the men take Justa and her granddaughter Ángeles hostage. In the stand-off that ensues, Alonso de Santos deftly interweaves tense excitement, comic banter and moments of great tenderness, eliciting our sympathy for the residents of the Vallecas neighbourhood, equally ignored by Spain’s nascent democracy as they had been under the dictatorship.This edition features Stuart Green’s facing page translation, as well as a critical introduction that provides readers with knowledge of the historical and cultural context in which the play was written and performed. The edition also includes an extensive collection of classroom activities especially designed by Lucy Meyer and Stuart Green to enable secondary school and university teachers to use the play, its translation and other authentic materials to teach a variety of linguistic and grammatical features of Spanish in all four skills areas in language learning.Table of ContentsIntroduction There’s no-one quite like Grandma 1 Vallecas: from village to neighbourhood and on stage 2 Plot summary 5 Alonso de Santos and the theatre of his time: playwriting and politics 7 La estanquera de Vallecas: a blend of sainete and the picaresque 13 Characters 20 Premiere(s): critical and commercial reaction 28 Notes on the translation 32 Acknowledgements 35 Translator's Note 35 Bibliography 36 La estanquera de Vallecas / The Granny and the Heist 39 Teaching Resources Introduction 138 Addressing any concerns 139 Teaching and learning objectives 140 Skills activities 142 Speaking 142 Listening 151 Reading 153 Writing 155 Research project 159 Performance 160 Lesson sequence 163 Entrevista con Beatriz Bergamín / Interview with Beatriz Bergamín 166 Transcriptions of videoclips 172 Photographs from the 1985 stage production 176 Sample student work 178 Answers to questions 189
£109.50
Liverpool University Press The Granny and the Heist / La estanquera de
Book SynopsisPart comedy, part thriller, part social critique, The Granny and the Heist (La estanquera de Vallecas) is the play with which José Luis Alonso de Santos reinvigorated the Spanish stage during a period of uncertainty upon the death of Francisco Franco and the end of theatre censorship. Premiered in 1981, it established Alonso de Santos as the most important playwright in Spain at a time when the country was emerging from decades of relative isolation from the rest of Europe.Set in a working class area of Madrid, the play tells the story of Leandro and Tocho, two out of work builders whose plan to rob a tobacconists goes awry due to the refusal of its owner, feisty grandmother Justa, to hand over the money. Barricading themselves in the shop as the forces of order arrive, the men take Justa and her granddaughter Ángeles hostage. In the stand-off that ensues, Alonso de Santos deftly interweaves tense excitement, comic banter and moments of great tenderness, eliciting our sympathy for the residents of the Vallecas neighbourhood, equally ignored by Spain’s nascent democracy as they had been under the dictatorship.This edition features Stuart Green’s facing page translation, as well as a critical introduction that provides readers with knowledge of the historical and cultural context in which the play was written and performed. The edition also includes an extensive collection of classroom activities especially designed by Lucy Meyer and Stuart Green to enable secondary school and university teachers to use the play, its translation and other authentic materials to teach a variety of linguistic and grammatical features of Spanish in all four skills areas in language learning.Table of ContentsIntroduction There’s no-one quite like Grandma 1 Vallecas: from village to neighbourhood and on stage 2 Plot summary 5 Alonso de Santos and the theatre of his time: playwriting and politics 7 La estanquera de Vallecas: a blend of sainete and the picaresque 13 Characters 20 Premiere(s): critical and commercial reaction 28 Notes on the translation 32 Acknowledgements 35 Translator's Note 35 Bibliography 36 La estanquera de Vallecas / The Granny and the Heist 39 Teaching Resources Introduction 138 Addressing any concerns 139 Teaching and learning objectives 140 Skills activities 142 Speaking 142 Listening 151 Reading 153 Writing 155 Research project 159 Performance 160 Lesson sequence 163 Entrevista con Beatriz Bergamín / Interview with Beatriz Bergamín 166 Transcriptions of videoclips 172 Photographs from the 1985 stage production 176 Sample student work 178 Answers to questions 189
£29.48
Liverpool University Press Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and
Book SynopsisIn the middle years of the sixteenth century, English drama witnessed the emergence of the ‘tyrant by entrie’ or the usurper, who supplanted earlier ‘tyrant by the administration’ as the main antihero of political drama. This usurper or, in Machiavellian terms principe nuove, was the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own ‘virtù’ and through an act of ‘lawmaking’ violence. Early Tudor morality plays were exclusively concerned with the legitimate monarch who becomes a tyrant; in the political drama of the first half of the sixteenth century, we do not encounter a single instance of usurpation among the texts that are still available to us. In contrast, the historical and tragic plays of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods teem with illegitimate monarchs. Almost all of Shakespeare’s history plays, at least four of his ten tragedies, and even a few of his comedies feature usurpation or potential usurpation of sovereign power as a crucial plot device. Why and how does usurpation emerge as a preoccupation in English theatre? What are the political, historical, legal, and dramaturgical transformations that influence and are influenced by this moment of emergence? As the first book-length study devoted exclusively to the study of usurpation and tyranny in sixteenth-century drama and politics, Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence will challenge existing disciplinary boundaries in order to engage with these critical questions.Trade ReviewReviews'Original scholarship of significant value to the academic study of the intersections between drama and politics in the early modern period; its strengths lie in its wide coverage of dramatic texts, from political moralities to Senecan tragedies, and from university dramas to histories of the commercial stage; its combination of these dramatic texts with the analysis of a variety of political materials; and its dual focus on the historical and political contexts of both England and Scotland.'Dr Clare Egan, Lancaster University'[A] perceptive study... [Majumder] examines a span of English and Scottish works, from John Skelton’s Magnificence, through David Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and George Buchanan’s literary and polemical work, to the Richard III plays of the late 1500s, identifying a crucial shift in the ways in which tyranny and its relationship to usurpation were represented.'Lucy Munro, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900Doyeeta Majumder [provides] a refreshing approach to what has become one of the most discussed topics in Shakespearean studies—that of the expression and negotiation of authority on the stage. [...] It is the final chapter that offers a truly original approach to the issues of tyranny and usurpation in its consideration of three versions of Richard III. [...] Majumder’s analysis takes into consideration the particular audiences and literary conceits employed in each play and offers nuanced and intelligent readings that expose the constant contestation and fluidity of supreme authority.'Ben Haworth, The Year's Work in English Studies Table of ContentsNote on Spellings and AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter One: The Kingly Vice: The Tyrant in Early Tudor DramaChapter Two: Sovereignty, Counsel, and Consent in Scotland: Ane Satyre of the Thrie EstaitisChapter Three: Artful Construction of the Political Realm: Buchanan and the Legitimacy of ResistanceChapter Four: Gorboduc: Absolutist Decision and the Two Bodies of the KingChapter Five: Tyranny Added to Usurpation: Richardus Tertius, The True Tragedy, and Richard IIIEpilogueBibliographyIndex
£109.50
Reaktion Books Freedom from Violence and Lies: Anton Chekhov's
Book SynopsisAn enlightening, nuanced, and accessible introduction to the life and work of one of the greatest writers of short fiction in history. Anton Chekhov's stories and plays endure, far beyond the Russian context, as outstanding modern literary models. In a brief, remarkable life, Chekhov rose from lower-class, provincial roots to become a physician, leading writer, and philanthropist, all in the face of a progressive fatal disease. In this new biography, Michael C. Finke analyzes Chekhov's major stories, plays, and nonfiction in the context of his life, both fleshing out the key features of Chekhov's poetics of prose and drama and revealing key continuities across genres, as well as between his lesser-studied early writings and the later works. An excellent resource for readers new to Chekhov, this book also presents much original scholarship and is an accessible, comprehensive overview of one of the greatest modern dramatists and writers of short fiction in history.Trade Review“A crown achievement of his life-time engagement with Chekhov, Finke’s concise biography tells a compelling and comprehensive story of the Russian writer’s life and work. Written with surgical precision and creative sensitivity, this highly readable book pulsates with a multitude of insights into Chekhov as a person and an artist. Freedom from Violence and Lies will be a treasure for anyone interested in Russian literature and this great beloved writer.” -- Radislav Lapushin, Associate Professor of Russian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“This valuable guide to the last great Russian writer of the nineteenth century achieves an exceptional balance between the life and the work. A wealth of biographical detail is harmoniously intertwined with rich analysis of Chekhov’s literary work, abounding with original and perspicacious interpretations. Chekhov’s life is studied in its two parallel streams—those of a writer’s career and of a medical professional. The latter further reveals competing lines of travail: as a practicing doctor, as a philanthropist, and as a student of the history and sociology of health care. The reader will enjoy a charming image of the writer, but also frequent, delicate reflections on the unique problems a scholar of Chekhov encounters, fascinating excavations into the deeper reaches of Chekhov’s work, and subtle commentaries on his poetics. An intellectual endeavor of considerable complexity, Finke’s book will have a distinguished place amidst the vast literature on Chekhov.” -- Savely Senderovich, Professor Emeritus of Russian Literature and Medieval Studies, Cornell University
£28.50
Liverpool University Press Terence: The Girl from Andros
Book SynopsisThe Girl from Andros was the first play of the brilliant but short-lived Roman comic playwright Terence and shows him as already a master dramatist. It is based on two plays (both now lost) by the Greek playwright Menander and was first put on in Rome in 166 BCE. The main focus of interest is the plotting and counter-plotting of a devious master and his equally devious slave, but there are also two boys both in danger of losing the girls they love, and a girl in search of the family from which she has long been separated – typical ingredients of a Latin comedy.The play is a theatrical tour de force with many comic highlights and is enlivened by a succession of metatheatrical remarks; but it also provokes thought on various aspects of human relationships in a male-dominated, slave-owning society that jealously guards its rights of citizenship. It was the first ancient Latin comedy to be performed in the Renaissance and influenced a number of plays in succeeding centuries, most notably Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1722); it was also the inspiration for Thornton Wilder’s novel The Woman of Andros (1930). This volume includes the first detailed commentary on the play in any language for nearly sixty years.Trade ReviewReviews ‘Dr Brown's book fills a real need, with a right-to-the-point introduction and commentary. His translation stays close to the Latin, but that does not keep it from being brilliant by moments'.Professor Benjamin Victor, University of Montreal'I am very happy to say that this Andria is an exemplary edition, invaluable for scholars, students and the Latin-inclined general reader alike. A fine work for us to remember Peter by.' Keith Maclennan, Classics for All'In preparing this last of his many contributions to the study of Terence, Brown was thus able to draw upon the full range of his knowledge, experience, and interests, and the result has all the virtues we might expect of him: clear and accurate discussion of the Latin text, a keen eye for details and nuances of interpretation, scrupulously evenhanded reporting and cogent analysis of past scholarly views, and a precise English rendering of the Latin original.' Sander Goldberg, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionText and TranslationCommentaryBibliographyIndex
£109.50
Liverpool University Press Terence: The Girl from Andros
Book SynopsisThe Girl from Andros was the first play of the brilliant but short-lived Roman comic playwright Terence and shows him as already a master dramatist. It is based on two plays (both now lost) by the Greek playwright Menander and was first put on in Rome in 166 BCE. The main focus of interest is the plotting and counter-plotting of a devious master and his equally devious slave, but there are also two boys both in danger of losing the girls they love, and a girl in search of the family from which she has long been separated – typical ingredients of a Latin comedy.The play is a theatrical tour de force with many comic highlights and is enlivened by a succession of metatheatrical remarks; but it also provokes thought on various aspects of human relationships in a male-dominated, slave-owning society that jealously guards its rights of citizenship. It was the first ancient Latin comedy to be performed in the Renaissance and influenced a number of plays in succeeding centuries, most notably Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1722); it was also the inspiration for Thornton Wilder’s novel The Woman of Andros (1930). This volume includes the first detailed commentary on the play in any language for nearly sixty years.Trade ReviewReviews ‘Dr Brown's book fills a real need, with a right-to-the-point introduction and commentary. His translation stays close to the Latin, but that does not keep it from being brilliant by moments'.Professor Benjamin Victor, University of Montreal'I am very happy to say that this Andria is an exemplary edition, invaluable for scholars, students and the Latin-inclined general reader alike. A fine work for us to remember Peter by.' Keith Maclennan, Classics for All'In preparing this last of his many contributions to the study of Terence, Brown was thus able to draw upon the full range of his knowledge, experience, and interests, and the result has all the virtues we might expect of him: clear and accurate discussion of the Latin text, a keen eye for details and nuances of interpretation, scrupulously evenhanded reporting and cogent analysis of past scholarly views, and a precise English rendering of the Latin original.' Sander Goldberg, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionText and TranslationCommentaryBibliographyIndex
£31.81
Liverpool University Press The Emergence of a theatrical science of man in
Book SynopsisThe emergence of a theatrical science of man in France, 1660-1740 highlights a radical departure from discussions of dramatic literature and its undergirding rules to a new, relational discourse on the emotional power of theater. Through a diverse cast of religious theaterphobes, government officials, playwrights, art theorists and proto-philosophes, Connors shows the concerted effort in early Enlightenment France to use texts about theater to establish broader theories on emotion, on the enduring psychological and social ramifications of affective moments, and more generally, on human interaction, motivation, and social behavior. This fundamentally anthropological assessment of theater emerged in the works of anti-theatrical religious writers, who argued that emotional response was theater’s raison d’être and that it was an efficient venue to learn more about the depravity of human nature. A new generation of pro-theatrical writers shared the anti-theatricalists’ intense focus on the emotions of theater, but unlike religious theaterphobes, they did not view emotion as a conduit of sin or as a dangerous, uncontrollable process; but rather, as cognitive-affective moments of feeling and learning. Connors’ study explores this reassessment of the theatrical experience which empowered writers to use plays, critiques, and other cultural materials about the stage to establish a theatrical science of man—an early Enlightenment project with aims to study and ‘improve’ the emotional, social, and political ‘health’ of eighteenth-century France.Trade Review‘Informed by recent work in emotions history and affect theory, the book’s six engaging and original chapters show how this theatrical science repositioned early eighteenth-century spectators, not as hapless victims, but as active learners for whom the theatrical experience was a source of knowledge about the emotions… The Emergence of a Theatrical Science of Man in France makes a strong case for why cultural understandings of theatre as a social practice must also consider intellectual history as well as the dramatic texts that were performed. There are many fine-grained analyses of plays that convincingly illustrate the emotional dynamics described in the book… this book makes for fascinating, provocative reading.’ Annelle Curulla, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre ResearchTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: theater, emotions, science of manDiderot’s relational dramaFrom religious theaterphobia to theatrical innovationAffect, intentionality, and the history of emotions Chapter 1: Theaterphobia and the transformational power of performanceAnti-theatrical criticism: goals and strategiesCorneille, Nicole, and the reality of emotionsLearning dangerously from the passions: Pierre Nicole’s Traité de la comédieDebating theatrical emotions in the wake of Nicole’s Traité Chapter 2: “Que sur la superficie de notre cœur”: Jean-Baptiste Dubos’s theatrical emotionsEmotional debates: past and presentA different path to aesthetic appreciationThe political case for pleasureDubos’s cognitive-affective sequences Chapter 3: Beyond affect: from Dubos’s “passions superficielles” to Houdar de La Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables”La Motte, the Querelle, and the RegencyLa Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables”The dramaturgical power of intérêt Chapter 4: From the page to the stage: La Motte’s theatrical inquiry into the emotionsContext and emotion in Les Macchabées (1721)Intentionality and suspense in Romulus (1722)Inès de Castro (1723) and the emotional politics of intérêt Chapter 5: Strategic passions: Marivaux’s Moderne subjectivitiesMarivaux’s trajectory from Moderne to bel esprit to scientist of manLearning from the “organs”: Marivaux’s intuitive ethicsSentimental strategies: Marivaux’s theories of emotion in Le Triomphe de l’amour (1732) Chapter 6: Learning through multiplicité: emotion and distance in the comédie larmoyanteThe decline and rebirth of Nivelle de La Chaussée’s emotional poeticsMeaning-making through the romanesqueThe pièce-cadre: emotion, multiplicité, and spectatorship in La Fausse Antipathie (1733) Conclusion: avant-gardes, emotion, and Enlightenment Works citedIndex
£98.30
Liverpool University Press British Women's Writing, 1930 to 1960: Between
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.This volume contributes to the vibrant, ongoing recuperative work on women’s writing by shedding new light on a group of authors commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The neologism ‘interfeminism’ – coined to partner Kristin Bluemel’s ‘intermodernism’ – locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two ‘waves’ of feminism, whilst also forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths that have traditionally overshadowed them. Drawing attention to the strengths of this ‘out-of-category’ writing in its own right, this volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the interwar and postwar periods pave the way for the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterise second and third wave feminism.The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of a substantial group of women authors of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. Additional exploration of the popular magazines Woman’s Weekly and Good Housekeeping and new material from the Vera Brittain archive add an innovative dimension to original readings of the literature of a transformative period of British social and cultural history.List of contributors: Natasha Periyan, Eleanor Reed, Maroula Joannou , Lola Serraf, Sue Kennedy, Ana Ashraf, Chris Hopkins, Gill Plain, Lucy Hall, Katherine Cooper, Nick Turner, Maria Elena Capitani, James Underwood, and Jane Thomas.Trade Review'This new collection of essays is a welcome addition to scholarship on twentieth-century women’s writing. [...] This is a recuperative project that insists on a dismissal of middlebrow from our critical lexicon in favour of an appreciation of ‘interfeminism’. Latent throughout are attempts to answer unspoken questions: did this period produce women’s writing that merits critical attention? And just how innovative was it? Where was its energy? Its revolt? Its exigency? Everywhere, this collection asserts, we just have to read it.'Lydia Fellgett, Women: A Cultural ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionSue Kennedy and Jane ThomasPart I: Women Within and Beyond: Visions of ‘This Island’ 1930-19601. 'Pacifism , Fascism and The Crisis of Civilization’: Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson and Nancy Mitford in the 1930sNatasha Periyan2. Lower-Middle-Class Domestic Leisure in Woman’s Weekly, 1930 Eleanor Reed3. ‘Unsettled’ and ‘Unsettling’ Women: Migrant Voices After the WarMaroula Joannou Part II: Women Bearing Witness: The Temperature of War4. Supporting and Resisting the Myth of the Blitz: Ambiguity in Susan Ertz's Anger in the Sky (1943)Lola Serraf5. ‘The Lure of Pleasure’: Sex and the Married Girl in Marghanita Laski’s To Bed with Grand Music (1946)Sue Kennedy6. The Ambivalence of Testimony in The Heat of the Day (1949), Elizabeth BowenAna Ashraf7. Re-presenting Wrens: Nancy Spain's Thank you Nelson (1945), Eileen Bigland's The Story of the WRNS (1946), Vera Laughton Matthews' Blue Tapestry (1948) and Edith Pargeter's She Goes to War (1942) Chris HopkinsPart III: Women Writing Men: Interwar, War and Aftermath8. ‘We must feed the men’: Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Maternal Plotting. Too Dear For My Possessing (1940), An Avenue of Stone (1947) and A Summer to Decide (1948)Gill Plain9. Men of the House: Oppressive Husbands and Displaced Wives in Second World War and Post-War Literature (Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier)Lucy Hall 10. British Women Writing War: The Case of Storm Jameson Katherine CooperPart IV: New Realities for Women: A Forward Glance11. Barbara Comyns and New Directions in Women’s WritingNick Turner12. A New Reality: Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958)Maria Elena Capitani13. Stevie Smith: Poetry and PersonalityJames Underwood14. ‘Whoever She Was’: Penelope Mortimer, Beyond the Feminine MystiqueJane Thomas
£53.17
Liverpool University Press Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and
Book SynopsisIn the middle years of the sixteenth century, English drama witnessed the emergence of the ‘tyrant by entrie’ or the usurper, who supplanted earlier ‘tyrant by the administration’ as the main antihero of political drama. This usurper or, in Machiavellian terms principe nuove, was the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own ‘virtù’ and through an act of ‘lawmaking’ violence. Early Tudor morality plays were exclusively concerned with the legitimate monarch who becomes a tyrant; in the political drama of the first half of the sixteenth century, we do not encounter a single instance of usurpation among the texts that are still available to us. In contrast, the historical and tragic plays of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods teem with illegitimate monarchs. Almost all of Shakespeare’s history plays, at least four of his ten tragedies, and even a few of his comedies feature usurpation or potential usurpation of sovereign power as a crucial plot device. Why and how does usurpation emerge as a preoccupation in English theatre? What are the political, historical, legal, and dramaturgical transformations that influence and are influenced by this moment of emergence? As the first book-length study devoted exclusively to the study of usurpation and tyranny in sixteenth-century drama and politics, Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence will challenge existing disciplinary boundaries in order to engage with these critical questions.Trade ReviewReviews'Original scholarship of significant value to the academic study of the intersections between drama and politics in the early modern period; its strengths lie in its wide coverage of dramatic texts, from political moralities to Senecan tragedies, and from university dramas to histories of the commercial stage; its combination of these dramatic texts with the analysis of a variety of political materials; and its dual focus on the historical and political contexts of both England and Scotland.'Dr Clare Egan, Lancaster University'[A] perceptive study... [Majumder] examines a span of English and Scottish works, from John Skelton’s Magnificence, through David Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and George Buchanan’s literary and polemical work, to the Richard III plays of the late 1500s, identifying a crucial shift in the ways in which tyranny and its relationship to usurpation were represented.'Lucy Munro, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900Doyeeta Majumder [provides] a refreshing approach to what has become one of the most discussed topics in Shakespearean studies—that of the expression and negotiation of authority on the stage. [...] It is the final chapter that offers a truly original approach to the issues of tyranny and usurpation in its consideration of three versions of Richard III. [...] Majumder’s analysis takes into consideration the particular audiences and literary conceits employed in each play and offers nuanced and intelligent readings that expose the constant contestation and fluidity of supreme authority.'Ben Haworth, The Year's Work in English Studies Table of ContentsNote on Spellings and AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter One: The Kingly Vice: The Tyrant in Early Tudor DramaChapter Two: Sovereignty, Counsel, and Consent in Scotland: Ane Satyre of the Thrie EstaitisChapter Three: Artful Construction of the Political Realm: Buchanan and the Legitimacy of ResistanceChapter Four: Gorboduc: Absolutist Decision and the Two Bodies of the KingChapter Five: Tyranny Added to Usurpation: Richardus Tertius, The True Tragedy, and Richard IIIEpilogueBibliographyIndex
£31.86
Liverpool University Press Charles Macklin and the Theatres of London
Book SynopsisCharles Macklin (1699?–1797) was one of the most important figures in the eighteenth-century theatre. Born in Ireland, he began acting in London in around 1725 and gave his final performance in 1789 – no other actor can claim to have acted across seven decades of the century, from the reign of George I to the Regency Crisis of 1788. He is credited alongside Garrick with the development of the natural school of acting and gave a famous performance of Shylock that gave George II nightmares. As a dramatist, he wrote one of the great comic pieces of the mid-century (Love à la Mode, 1759), as well as the only play of the century to be twice refused a performance licence (The Man of the World, 1781). He opened an experimental coffeehouse in Covent Garden, he advocated energetically for actors’ rights and copyright reform for dramatists, and he successfully sued theatre rioters. In short, he had an astonishingly varied career. With essays by leading experts on eighteenth-century culture, this volume provides a sustained critical examination of his career, illuminating many aspects of eighteenth-century theatrical culture and of the European Enlightenment, and explores the scholarly benefit – and thrill – of restaging Macklin’s work in the twenty-first century.Trade Review‘With thirteen scholarly articles by established academics, this publication will without doubt restore Macklin to his rightful place as a towering personality of the London theatre world of the eighteenth century… [a] powerful academic panorama of Macklin’s work.’ Seán Beattie, Donegal Annual‘This collection will interest more than just fans of the Irish actor Charles Macklin. At stake in examining Macklin’s life and work is the fashioning of a more capacious understanding of the Enlightenment… meticulous research also unearths evidence that expands our view of Macklin’s impact on Georgian theatre.’ Kristina Straub, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research
£109.50
Liverpool University Press A Stage of Emancipation: Change and Progress at
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. As the prominence of the recent #WakingTheFeminists movement illustrates, the Irish theatre world is highly conscious of the ways in which theatre can foster social emancipation. This volume of essays uncovers a wide range of marginalised histories by reflecting on the emancipatory role that the Dublin Gate Theatre (est. 1928) has played in Irish culture and society, both historically and in more recent times. The Gate’s founders, Hilton Edwards and Michéal mac Liammóir, promoted the work of many female playwrights and created an explicitly cosmopolitan stage on which repressive ideas about gender, sexuality, class and language were questioned. During Selina Cartmell’s current tenure as director, cultural diversity and social emancipation have also featured prominently on the Gate’s agenda, with various productions exploring issues of ethnicity in contemporary Ireland. The Gate thus offers a unique model for studying the ways in which cosmopolitan theatres, as cultural institutions, give expression to and engage with the complexities of identity and diversity in changing, globalised societies. CONTRIBUTORS: David Clare, Marguérite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Barry Houlihan, Radvan Markus, Deirdre McFeely, Justine Nakase, Siobhan O'Gorman, Mary Trotter, Grace Vroomen, Ian R. Walsh, Feargal WhelanTrade ReviewReviews‘The excellent essays in this collection add significantly to our knowledge of the Gate Theatre and its social and cultural practices and their contexts.’ Professor José Lanters, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee‘This rich stimulating collection revisions the work of Dublin’s Gate Theatre and celebrates how it posed radical challenges to Irish society’s social and cultural sore points and no-go-areas. Through a dazzling diversity of case studies in production, performance and theatrical practices the essays argue convincingly for the role of the Gate in confronting audiences with images and impacts that countered attitudes and assumptions about sexuality, gender, class divisions, racialization and Irish (including language) identity. While the Gate’s acknowledged theatrical aesthetics are not neglected, the book stresses the Gate Theatre’s achievement in juggling localism and cosmopolitanism with invigorating and engaging tension.’Dr Cathy Leeney, University College Dublin'A Stage of Emancipation is full of outstanding theatre scholarship from emerging and established voices. It provides fascinating insight into the role that the Dublin Gate Theatre has played in promoting social, economic, and cultural change within Irish society since the late 1920s. Most notably, it highlights the valiant efforts by key figures in the theatre’s history to bring marginalised stories and progressive attitudes to the Irish stage. This is an enormously valuable book for students, academics, and practitioners alike.'Dr Fiona McDonagh, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick'This collection makes room to breathe in Irish theatre – allowing us to inhale the extraordinary diversity of identities and artistry which were embodied on the Gate stage. Our eyes are opened once again to these forgotten legacies which challenge singular concepts of nation and society, transforming not only our understanding of the past but liberating our approach to theatre now.'- Dr Melissa Sihra, Trinity College DublinTable of Contents1. IntroductionMarguérite Corporaal and Ruud van den BeukenI: Liberating Bodies2. Queering the Irish Actress: The Gate Theatre Production of Children in Uniform (1934)Mary Trotter3. Maura Laverty at the Gate: Theatre as Social Commentary in 1950s IrelandDeirdre McFeelyII: Emancipating Communities4. ‘Let’s Be Gay, While We May’: Artistic Platforms and the Construction of Queer Communities in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–?Grace Vroomen5. Images and Imperatives: Robert Collis’s Marrowbone Lane (1939) at the Gate as Theatre for Social ChangeIan R. WalshIII: Staging Minority Languages 6. Authenticity and Social Change on the Gate Stage in the 1970s: ‘Communicating with the People’Barry Houlihan7. Micheál mac Liammóir, the Irish Language and the Idea of FreedomRadvan MarkusIV: Deconstructing Aesthetics8. The Use of Minority Languages at Dublin’s Gate Theatre and Barcelona’s TeatreLliureFeargal Whelan and David Clare9. Mogu and the Unicorn: Frederick May’s Music for the Gate TheatreMark Fitzgerald10. Tartan Transpositions: Materialising Europe, Ireland and Scotland in the Designs of Molly MacEwenSiobhán O’GormanV: Contesting Traditions in Contemporary Theatre11. From White Othello to Black Hamlet: A History of Race and Representation at the Gate TheatreJustine Nakase12. Bending the Plots: Selina Cartmell’s Gate and Politics of Gender InclusionMarguérite Corporaal
£29.91
Liverpool University Press The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights,
Book SynopsisThis two-volume edited collection illuminates the valuable counter-canon of Irish women’s playwriting with forty-two essays written by leading and emerging Irish theatre scholars and practitioners. Covering three hundred years of Irish theatre history from 1716 to 2016, it is the most comprehensive study of plays written by Irish women to date. These short essays provide both a valuable introduction and innovative analysis of key playtexts, bringing renewed attention to scripts and writers that continue to be under-represented in theatre criticism and performance.Volume One covers plays by Irish women playwrights written between 1716 to 1992, and seeks to address and redress the historic absence of Irish female playwrights in theatre histories. Highlighting the work of nine women playwrights from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as thirteen of the twentieth century’s key writers, the chapters in this volume explore such varied themes as the impact of space and place on identity, women’s strategic use of genre, and theatrical responses to shifts in Irish politics and culture.CONTRIBUTORS: Conrad Brunström, David Clare, Thomas Conway, Marguérite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Shirley-Anne Godfrey, Úna Kealy, Sonja Lawrenson, Cathy Leeney, Marc Mac Lochlainn, Kate McCarthy, Fiona McDonagh, Deirdre McFeely, Megan W. Minogue, Ciara Moloney, Justine Nakase, Patricia O'Beirne, Kevin O'Connor, Ciara O'Dowd, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, Anna Pilz, Emilie Pine, Ruud van den Beuken, Feargal WhelanTrade Review'Spanning from the eighteenth-century to the present day, The Golden Thread brings together the work of leading scholars in Irish theatre and women’s writing with that of theatre practitioners to recover the often-hidden contributions of women playwrights. The collection develops a counter-canon of Irish playwrights that examines issues of class, sexuality, and disability.'Colleen English, The New Books Network'This is one of those indispensable works that will influence the future of performance studies and feminist criticism. The number and variety of voices on display, the effort in the reconstruction of the canon by adding women playwrights who had been erased in the past, and the declared ambition to draw attention to and create the conditions for revivals and publications of plays created by contemporary women playwrights make this extensive compilation more than recommendable. [....] All in all, a very enjoyable edition, which makes for a rewarding read and provides essential information.'María Gaviña-Costero, Estudios Irlandeses'In a word, The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716–2016... is superb. This two-volume collection showcases writers familiar and less familiar, offers valuable context and incisive textual readings, attends to performance as well as stagecraft, and ranges among historical periods and critical approaches.'Prof. Paige Reynolds, English Studies‘The Golden Thread is an ambitious, richly textured and multifaceted research piece that opens up the field of Irish theatre studies in most fruitful ways. It offers a robust counteracting to the under-representation of Irish women playwrights in the canon and is a strong incentive for producers to revive their work… a most valuable book for anyone interested in Irish studies, in Irish theatre studies and also for anyone interested in an alternative history of Irish theatre.’ Hélène Lecossois, Études irlandaisesTable of ContentsIntroductionDavid Clare, Fiona McDonagh & Justine Nakase“There’s no Place like old England”: Space and Identity in Mary Davys’s The Northern Heiress; Or, the Humours of York (1716)Marguérite Corporaal“Some tender scenes demand the melting tear”: Frances Sheridan’s The Discovery (1763) and the Vindication of “Sentimental Comedy”Conrad BrunströmIrish Wit on the London Stage: Elizabeth Griffith’s The Platonic Wife (1765)Clíona Ó GallchoirDeceptive Disabilities in Maria Edgeworth’s The Double Disguise (1786): Irish Patriotism, Consumption, and the Martial Male BodySonja LawrensonReimagining Maria Edgeworth’s The Knapsack (1801) for a Contemporary Young AudienceFiona McDonagh & Marc Mac LochlainnMary Balfour’s Kathleen O’Neil (1814): An Expression or Betrayal of Her Ulster Scots Background?David ClareJustice and the “Triple Goddess” Archetypes in Anna Maria Hall’s Mabel’s Curse (1837)Ciara MoloneyOperas without a Hero: A Comic Trilogy (1876–1879) by Elena Norton and Mary HeyneMark Fitzgerald“Petticoats!—petticoats! petticoats!”: Sartorial Economics in Clotilde Graves’s A Mother of Three (1896)Justine NakaseFrom Gort to Antarctica: Lady Gregory’s Audiences and The Rising of the Moon (1903)Anna PilzLady Gregory’s Grania (1912): Myth and MythologyShirley-Anne Godfrey“You have let the play go to pieces”: Geraldine Cummins and Susanne R. Day’s Fox and Geese (1917) and the Hegemony of the Early Abbey TheatreThomas Conway“Something left over from the Eighteenth Century, undergoing a slow process of decay”: The Impotence of the Ascendancy in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–? (1931)Ruud van den BeukenShape Shifting the Silence: An Analysis of Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady (2017) by Amanda Coogan in Collaboration with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, an Appropriation of Teresa Deevy’s The King of Spain’s Daughter (1935)Úna Kealy & Kate McCarthyThe Premiere Staging of Mount Prospect (1940) by Elizabeth Connor (the Pen Name of Una Troy) at the Abbey TheatreCiara O’DowdCorruption and Socio-Political Tensions in Christine Longford’s Tankardstown (1948)Kevin O’ConnorSocial Class, Space, and Containment in 1950s Ireland: Maura Laverty’s “Dublin Trilogy” (1951–1952)Cathy Leeney & Deirdre McFeelyMáiréad Ní Ghráda’s An Triail/On Trial (1964): Hiding Hypocrisy in Plain SightFeargal WhelanChristina Reid: Acts of Memory in Tea in a China Cup (1983), The Belle of the Belfast City (1989), and My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name (1989)Emilie PineAnne Devlin: Depicting a Gendered Journey: Men and Women on The Long March (1984)Megan W. MinogueA Partial Eclipse: The Role of the Religious in Patricia Burke Brogan’s Eclipsed (1988 / 1992)Patricia O’BeirneCoda – What the Woman Sees: Waking Up to Feminist AestheticsCathy Leeney
£104.02
Liverpool University Press The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights,
Book SynopsisThis two-volume edited collection illuminates the valuable counter-canon of Irish women’s playwriting with forty-two essays written by leading and emerging Irish theatre scholars and practitioners. Covering three hundred years of Irish theatre history from 1716 to 2016, it is the most comprehensive study of plays written by Irish women to date. These short essays provide both a valuable introduction and innovative analysis of key playtexts, bringing renewed attention to scripts and writers that continue to be under-represented in theatre criticism and performance. Volume Two contains chapters focused on plays by sixteen Irish women playwrights produced between 1992 and 2016, highlighting the explosion of new work by contemporary writers. The plays in this volume explore women’s experiences at the intersections of class, sexuality, disability, and ethnicity, pushing at the boundaries of how we define not only Irish theatre, but Irish identity more broadly.CONTRIBUTORS: Nelson Barre, Mary Burke, David Clare, Shonagh Hill, Mária Kurdi, José Lanters, Fiona McDonagh, Dorothy Morrissey, Justine Nakase, Brian Ó Conchubhair, Brenda O'Connell, Shane O'Neill, Graham Price, Siobhán Purcell, Carole Quigley, Sarah Jane Scaife, Melissa Sihra, Clare WallaceTrade Review'In a word, The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716–2016... is superb. This two-volume collection showcases writers familiar and less familiar, offers valuable context and incisive textual readings, attends to performance as well as stagecraft, and ranges among historical periods and critical approaches.'Prof. Paige Reynolds, English Studies‘The Golden Thread is an ambitious, richly textured and multifaceted research piece that opens up the field of Irish theatre studies in most fruitful ways. It offers a robust counteracting to the under-representation of Irish women playwrights in the canon and is a strong incentive for producers to revive their work… a most valuable book for anyone interested in Irish studies, in Irish theatre studies and also for anyone interested in an alternative history of Irish theatre.’ Hélène Lecossois, Études irlandaises‘This is one of those indispensable works that will influence the future of performance studies and feminist criticism. The number and variety of voices on display, the effort in the reconstruction of the canon by adding women playwrights who had been erased in the past, and the declared ambition to draw attention to and create the conditions for revivals and publications of plays created by contemporary women playwrights make this extensive compilation more than recommendable... All in all, a very enjoyable edition, which makes for a rewarding read and provides essential information.’ María Gaviña-Costero, Estudios Irlandeses‘Spanning from the eighteenth-century to the present day, The Golden Thread brings together the work of leading scholars in Irish theatre and women’s writing with that of theatre practitioners to recover the often-hidden contributions of women playwrights. The collection develops a counter-canon of Irish playwrights that examines issues of class, sexuality, and disability.’ Colleen English, The New Books NetworkTable of ContentsIntroductionDavid Clare, Fiona McDonagh & Justine NakaseMarie Jones’s Don’t Look Down (1992): Representations of Disability for Young AudiencesFiona McDonaghLesbianism and Legibility in Emma Donoghue’s I Know My Own Heart (1993)Shonagh HillLearning to Play Poker: The Re-vision of Irish Women’s Agency in Gina Moxley’s Danti-Dan (1995)Nelson BarreDirecting Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats… (1998) in ChinaSarah Jane ScaifeUrsula Rani Sarma’s Blue (2000) and Social Transformation in IrelandShane O’NeillChallenging “Good Taste”: Roslaeen McDonagh’s The Baby Doll Project (2003) and the Creation of a “Traveller Canon”Mary BurkeDisordered States and Affective Economies in Stella Feehily’s O Go My Man (2006)Clare WallaceLiving in a Rape Culture: Gang Rape and “Toxic Masculinity” in Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl (2006)Carole QuigleyMarina Carr’s Woman and Scarecrow (2006) and the Ars MoriendiJosé LantersLizzie Nunnery’s Intemperance (2007) and Compromised Mental Health among the Irish in BritainDavid ClareMemory, History, and Forgetting in Anne Devlin’s The Forgotten (2009)Graham Price“We are here, we were here all along”: Queer Invisibility and Performing Age in Amy Conroy’s I (Heart) Alice (Heart) I (2010)Brenda O’ConnellMotherhood and the Search for Recognition in Deirdre Kinahan’s Moment (2011)Dorothy Morrissey“Unrealing the Real”: Disability and Darwinism in Lynda Radley’s Futureproof (2011)Siobhán PurcellFamily Dysfunction and Character Dynamics: Nancy Harris’s Our New Girl (2012) in Conversation with Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlin (1996) and Martin Crimp’s The Country (2000)Mária KurdiUnconscious Casting: Stacey Gregg’s Shibboleth (2015), Walls, and the (En)Gendering of ViolenceJustine NakaseNevertheless, She Persisted: Celia de Fréine’s Luíse (2016)Brian Ó ConchubhairCoda – Spinning Gold: Threads of Augusta Gregory and Marina CarrMelissa Sihra
£109.50
Liverpool University Press A Stage of Emancipation: Change and Progress at
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. As the prominence of the recent #WakingTheFeminists movement illustrates, the Irish theatre world is highly conscious of the ways in which theatre can foster social emancipation. This volume of essays uncovers a wide range of marginalised histories by reflecting on the emancipatory role that the Dublin Gate Theatre (est. 1928) has played in Irish culture and society, both historically and in more recent times. The Gate’s founders, Hilton Edwards and Michéal mac Liammóir, promoted the work of many female playwrights and created an explicitly cosmopolitan stage on which repressive ideas about gender, sexuality, class and language were questioned. During Selina Cartmell’s current tenure as director, cultural diversity and social emancipation have also featured prominently on the Gate’s agenda, with various productions exploring issues of ethnicity in contemporary Ireland. The Gate thus offers a unique model for studying the ways in which cosmopolitan theatres, as cultural institutions, give expression to and engage with the complexities of identity and diversity in changing, globalised societies. CONTRIBUTORS: David Clare, Marguérite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Barry Houlihan, Radvan Markus, Deirdre McFeely, Justine Nakase, Siobhan O'Gorman, Mary Trotter, Grace Vroomen, Ian R. Walsh, Feargal WhelanTrade ReviewReviews‘The excellent essays in this collection add significantly to our knowledge of the Gate Theatre and its social and cultural practices and their contexts.’ Professor José Lanters, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee‘This rich stimulating collection revisions the work of Dublin’s Gate Theatre and celebrates how it posed radical challenges to Irish society’s social and cultural sore points and no-go-areas. Through a dazzling diversity of case studies in production, performance and theatrical practices the essays argue convincingly for the role of the Gate in confronting audiences with images and impacts that countered attitudes and assumptions about sexuality, gender, class divisions, racialization and Irish (including language) identity. While the Gate’s acknowledged theatrical aesthetics are not neglected, the book stresses the Gate Theatre’s achievement in juggling localism and cosmopolitanism with invigorating and engaging tension.’Dr Cathy Leeney, University College Dublin'A Stage of Emancipation is full of outstanding theatre scholarship from emerging and established voices. It provides fascinating insight into the role that the Dublin Gate Theatre has played in promoting social, economic, and cultural change within Irish society since the late 1920s. Most notably, it highlights the valiant efforts by key figures in the theatre’s history to bring marginalised stories and progressive attitudes to the Irish stage. This is an enormously valuable book for students, academics, and practitioners alike.'Dr Fiona McDonagh, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick'This collection makes room to breathe in Irish theatre – allowing us to inhale the extraordinary diversity of identities and artistry which were embodied on the Gate stage. Our eyes are opened once again to these forgotten legacies which challenge singular concepts of nation and society, transforming not only our understanding of the past but liberating our approach to theatre now.'- Dr Melissa Sihra, Trinity College DublinTable of Contents1. IntroductionMarguérite Corporaal and Ruud van den BeukenI: Liberating Bodies2. Queering the Irish Actress: The Gate Theatre Production of Children in Uniform (1934)Mary Trotter3. Maura Laverty at the Gate: Theatre as Social Commentary in 1950s IrelandDeirdre McFeelyII: Emancipating Communities4. ‘Let’s Be Gay, While We May’: Artistic Platforms and the Construction of Queer Communities in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–?Grace Vroomen5. Images and Imperatives: Robert Collis’s Marrowbone Lane (1939) at the Gate as Theatre for Social ChangeIan R. WalshIII: Staging Minority Languages 6. Authenticity and Social Change on the Gate Stage in the 1970s: ‘Communicating with the People’Barry Houlihan7. Micheál mac Liammóir, the Irish Language and the Idea of FreedomRadvan MarkusIV: Deconstructing Aesthetics8. The Use of Minority Languages at Dublin’s Gate Theatre and Barcelona’s TeatreLliureFeargal Whelan and David Clare9. Mogu and the Unicorn: Frederick May’s Music for the Gate TheatreMark Fitzgerald10. Tartan Transpositions: Materialising Europe, Ireland and Scotland in the Designs of Molly MacEwenSiobhán O’GormanV: Contesting Traditions in Contemporary Theatre11. From White Othello to Black Hamlet: A History of Race and Representation at the Gate TheatreJustine Nakase12. Bending the Plots: Selina Cartmell’s Gate and Politics of Gender InclusionMarguérite Corporaal
£57.13
Liverpool University Press British Women's Writing, 1930 to 1960: Between
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.This volume contributes to the vibrant, ongoing recuperative work on women’s writing by shedding new light on a group of authors commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The neologism ‘interfeminism’ – coined to partner Kristin Bluemel’s ‘intermodernism’ – locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two ‘waves’ of feminism, whilst also forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths that have traditionally overshadowed them. Drawing attention to the strengths of this ‘out-of-category’ writing in its own right, this volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the interwar and postwar periods pave the way for the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterise second and third wave feminism.The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of a substantial group of women authors of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. Additional exploration of the popular magazines Woman’s Weekly and Good Housekeeping and new material from the Vera Brittain archive add an innovative dimension to original readings of the literature of a transformative period of British social and cultural history.List of contributors: Natasha Periyan, Eleanor Reed, Maroula Joannou , Lola Serraf, Sue Kennedy, Ana Ashraf, Chris Hopkins, Gill Plain, Lucy Hall, Katherine Cooper, Nick Turner, Maria Elena Capitani, James Underwood, and Jane Thomas.Trade Review'This new collection of essays is a welcome addition to scholarship on twentieth-century women’s writing. [...] This is a recuperative project that insists on a dismissal of middlebrow from our critical lexicon in favour of an appreciation of ‘interfeminism’. Latent throughout are attempts to answer unspoken questions: did this period produce women’s writing that merits critical attention? And just how innovative was it? Where was its energy? Its revolt? Its exigency? Everywhere, this collection asserts, we just have to read it.'Lydia Fellgett, Women: A Cultural ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionSue Kennedy and Jane ThomasPart I: Women Within and Beyond: Visions of ‘This Island’ 1930-19601. 'Pacifism , Fascism and The Crisis of Civilization’: Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson and Nancy Mitford in the 1930sNatasha Periyan2. Lower-Middle-Class Domestic Leisure in Woman’s Weekly, 1930 Eleanor Reed3. ‘Unsettled’ and ‘Unsettling’ Women: Migrant Voices After the WarMaroula Joannou Part II: Women Bearing Witness: The Temperature of War4. Supporting and Resisting the Myth of the Blitz: Ambiguity in Susan Ertz's Anger in the Sky (1943)Lola Serraf5. ‘The Lure of Pleasure’: Sex and the Married Girl in Marghanita Laski’s To Bed with Grand Music (1946)Sue Kennedy6. The Ambivalence of Testimony in The Heat of the Day (1949), Elizabeth BowenAna Ashraf7. Re-presenting Wrens: Nancy Spain's Thank you Nelson (1945), Eileen Bigland's The Story of the WRNS (1946), Vera Laughton Matthews' Blue Tapestry (1948) and Edith Pargeter's She Goes to War (1942) Chris HopkinsPart III: Women Writing Men: Interwar, War and Aftermath8. ‘We must feed the men’: Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Maternal Plotting. Too Dear For My Possessing (1940), An Avenue of Stone (1947) and A Summer to Decide (1948)Gill Plain9. Men of the House: Oppressive Husbands and Displaced Wives in Second World War and Post-War Literature (Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier)Lucy Hall 10. British Women Writing War: The Case of Storm Jameson Katherine CooperPart IV: New Realities for Women: A Forward Glance11. Barbara Comyns and New Directions in Women’s WritingNick Turner12. A New Reality: Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958)Maria Elena Capitani13. Stevie Smith: Poetry and PersonalityJames Underwood14. ‘Whoever She Was’: Penelope Mortimer, Beyond the Feminine MystiqueJane Thomas
£34.99
