Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

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Book SynopsisAfterlives of Endor offers an analysis of the way early modern English literature addressed the period''s anxieties about witchcraft and theatricality. What determined whether or not a demonologist imagined a trial as a spectacle? What underlying epistemological constraints governed such choices and what conceptions of witchcraft did these choices reveal? Pairing readings of demonological texts with canonical plays and poetry, Laura Levine examines such questions. Through analyses of manuals and pamphlets about the prosecution of witchesincluding Reginald Scot''s skeptical The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), King James VI/I''s Daemonologie (1597), and Jean Bodin''s De la Demonomanie des Sorciers (1580)Afterlives of Endor examines the way literary texts such as Shakespeare''s The Winter''s Tale and The Tempest, Spenser''s The Faerie Queene, and Marlowe''s Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus address anxietie

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Book SynopsisFor all that we love and admire Shakespeare, he is not that easy to grasp. He may have written in Elizabethan English, but when we read him, we can't help but understand his words, metaphors, and syntax in relation to our own. Until now, explaining the powers and pleasures of the Bard's language has always meant returning it to its original linguistic and rhetorical contexts. Countless excellent studies situate his unusual gift for words in relation to the resources of the English of his day. They may mention the presumptions of modern readers, but their goal is to correct and invalidate any false impressions. Shakesplish is the first book devoted to our experience as modern readers of Early Modern English. Drawing on translation theory and linguistics, Paula Blank argues that for us, Shakespeare's language is a hybrid English composed of errors in comprehension—and that such errors enable, rather than hinder, some of the pleasures we take in his language. Investigating how and why it strikes us, by turns, as beautiful, funny, sexy, or smart, she shows how, far from being the fossilized remains of an older idiom, Shakespeare's English is also our own.Trade Review"As Paula Blank argues, whether or not we are dipping into a 'No Fear' edition, we are always paraphrasing Shakespeare. Shamelessly fun to read, this original and timely book should have broad appeal." -- Julia Reinhard Lupton * University of California, Irvine *"In her worthy sequel to Broken English, Paula Blank meditates provocatively on the 'friction' induced by our distance from early modern English. Shakesplish confronts and celebrates that distance, giving voice to a past now revived for our era." -- Scott Newstok, Director, Pearce Shakespeare Endowment * Rhodes College *"This beautifully conceived book argues for a new and suggestive way of making Shakespeare our contemporary, at once familiar and exotic. Focusing on Shakespeare's language not as he might have intended it but as we understand it today, Paula Blank shows how what registers to a modern reader as the difficulty or strangeness of Shakespeare actually provokes singularly rich forms of cultural and personal self-discovery." -- Geoffrey Harpham, Kenan Institute for Ethics * Duke University *"We owe Paula Blank much thanks for bequeathing to us a book that I would not hesitate to describe as possessing the same traits she has analyzed for us—a book that is 'beautiful', 'funny', 'smart', and yes, even 'sexy': seductive, that is, in the elegant and articulate way in which it helps reveal to us our innermost desires about what Shakespeare's language should be." -- Iolanda Plescia * Memoria di Shakespeare *"Blank returns the reader to the act of luxuriating in the opulent richness of Shakespeare's language like no other scholar I have ever encountered. Shakesplish: How We Read Shakespeare's Language will be consulted for decades to come because of its indefatigable energy and exuberate erudition." -- William Reginald Rampone * Sixteenth Century Journal *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1"Shakespeare in Modern English" chapter abstractThis chapter lays the groundwork for approaching Shakespeare's English from the perspective of our own, drawing on translation theory, second-language acquisition theory, and performance studies. It destabilizes the argument over whether Shakespeare should or should not be translated into modern English by posing the theory that Shakespeare's English, in our reception of it, has become an "interlanguage," a uniquely modern hybrid. 2"Beautiful" chapter abstractThis chapter attempts to account for our continuing sense of Shakespeare's language as "beautiful" in an age in which the traditional aesthetic categories of "beautiful" and "sublime" have given way to new categories, such as "cute" or "interesting." Starting from the premise that, when it comes to Shakespeare, we are closer to eighteenth-century critics than twenty-first century ones, this chapter posits that our best chance of determining what it is that makes Shakespeare's language beautiful lies in considering what happens in the moment we make contact with his texts, the moment of our interlinguistic participation. Focusing on our experience of belatedness in relation to Shakespeare's Early Modern diction and syntax, this chapter examines various examples of Shakespeare's beautiful—and not so beautiful—language in order to determine the source of our aesthetic pleasure. 3"Sexy" chapter abstractThis chapter shows that Shakespeare's language is more openly sexual, when it is sexual, than our Modern English expectations have led us to believe. Early Modern English lacked "clinical" terms for male and female sexual organs and for the act of sexual intercourse itself. When Shakespeare uses terms like "sport" or "dally" for sex, he is speaking directly rather than euphemistically. This chapter argues that our interest in Shakespeare's sexual language actually reveals our ambivalence toward his original sexual frankness: We prefer sex in Shakespeare be hidden, so that we can find it out for ourselves. For us, Shakespeare's sexual language is, in itself, a metaphor for our idea of Shakespeare's text as coded, hiding some essential "truth." 4"Funny" chapter abstractThis chapter explores the "funny" and "unfunny" effects of Modern English on Shakespeare's comedy. Situating Shakespeare's jokes within the context of several dominant, enduring theories of humor in the Western tradition—including "superiority" theories, "arousal" or "release" theories, and "incongruity" theories—the chapter explains why and how it is that some of Shakespeare's comedy falls flat to contemporary ears while other instances have become more funny as a result of the gap between our English and Shakespeare's. 5"Smart" chapter abstractThis chapter examines Shakespeare's "intelligence effects," the ways in which his language gives us a sense of depth and acuity. Shakespeare did not use the word "intelligence" in the way that we do: in Early Modern English, the key terms were "wit" and "discourse of reason." Often, modern readers find Shakespeare's characters' "intelligent" because they demonstrate inwardness and self-consciousness; in the process, however, we miss their many failures of logic, which for Shakespeare's audience would have indicated a failure of reason. The chapter further argues that Shakespeare's poetic syntax makes him sound "smarter" to us. 6"Shakespeare as Modern English" chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on Modern English phrases that derive from Shakespeare's Early Modern English, but have been adapted to more recent forms of the vernacular, either in meaning or form. Modern English includes many idioms that originate in Shakespeare, such as "hoist with his own petard," "one fell swoop," and "primrose path." This chapter divides such idioms into three categories: those whose literal meaning is now obscure to us, those that we hear simply as Modern English, and those that sound antiquated and clichéd. Finally, the chapter returns to our modern obsession with identifying idioms as Shakespearean. Cited so often, in so many contexts, over so many centuries, these phrases have become their own particular suborder of language. They are far more ours than his, not Shakespeare but "Shakespeare."

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Book SynopsisIn Networking Print in Shakespeare's England, Blaine Greteman uses new analytical tools to examine early English print networks and the systemic changes that reshaped early modern literature, thought, and politics. In early modern England, printed books were a technology that connected people—not only readers and writers, but an increasingly expansive community of printers, publishers, and booksellers—in new ways. By pairing the methods of network analysis with newly available digital archives, Greteman aims to change the way we usually talk about authorship, publication, and print. As Greteman reveals, network analysis of the nearly 500,000 books printed in England before 1800 makes it possible to speak once again of a "print revolution," identifying a sudden tipping point at which the early modern print network became a small world where information could spread in new and powerful ways. Along with providing new insights into canonical literary figures like Milton and Shakespeare, data analysis also uncovers the hidden histories of key figures in this transformation who have been virtually ignored. Both a primer on the power of network analysis and a critical intervention in early modern studies, the book is ultimately an extended meditation on agency and the complexity of action in context. Trade Review"This book offers rigorous scholarship into print culture, while at the same time all the main terms of network theory appear, meticulously documented, clearly explained, and well illustrated by examples. This interweaving is beautifully accomplished, and the result is as delightful to read as it is deeply engaged in all the relevant scholarship."—Laura Mandell, Texas A&M University"This is an important and much-needed work that provides a blueprint for scholars who wish to adopt network analysis for their own research.Greteman persuasively demonstrates how network analysis can make meaningful contributions to well-established humanistic research fields and questions."—Jessica Otis, George Mason University"The book skillfully shows that network analysis can be incorporated into a serious engagement with the particularities of early modern print culture. The central principle of networks is connection, and the connections Greteman makes among fields of study and among the many agents of early modern print culture are a powerful illustration of the utility of this kind of analysis in literary criticism."—John R. Ladd, Modern Language QuarterlyTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Methods and Data 2. A Small New World: Fire, Infection, and Sudden Change in the English Print Network 3. Hubs in the Network: Nicholas Okes and the Making of Infectious Information 4. Radical Betweenness: Eleanor Davies and Mary Cary 5. Weak Ties and the Making of a Strong Poet: John Milton's Early Publishers Epilogue: Future Directions in Networking the Past

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Book SynopsisIn Networking Print in Shakespeare's England, Blaine Greteman uses new analytical tools to examine early English print networks and the systemic changes that reshaped early modern literature, thought, and politics. In early modern England, printed books were a technology that connected people—not only readers and writers, but an increasingly expansive community of printers, publishers, and booksellers—in new ways. By pairing the methods of network analysis with newly available digital archives, Greteman aims to change the way we usually talk about authorship, publication, and print. As Greteman reveals, network analysis of the nearly 500,000 books printed in England before 1800 makes it possible to speak once again of a "print revolution," identifying a sudden tipping point at which the early modern print network became a small world where information could spread in new and powerful ways. Along with providing new insights into canonical literary figures like Milton and Shakespeare, data analysis also uncovers the hidden histories of key figures in this transformation who have been virtually ignored. Both a primer on the power of network analysis and a critical intervention in early modern studies, the book is ultimately an extended meditation on agency and the complexity of action in context. Trade Review"This book offers rigorous scholarship into print culture, while at the same time all the main terms of network theory appear, meticulously documented, clearly explained, and well illustrated by examples. This interweaving is beautifully accomplished, and the result is as delightful to read as it is deeply engaged in all the relevant scholarship."—Laura Mandell, Texas A&M University"This is an important and much-needed work that provides a blueprint for scholars who wish to adopt network analysis for their own research.Greteman persuasively demonstrates how network analysis can make meaningful contributions to well-established humanistic research fields and questions."—Jessica Otis, George Mason University"The book skillfully shows that network analysis can be incorporated into a serious engagement with the particularities of early modern print culture. The central principle of networks is connection, and the connections Greteman makes among fields of study and among the many agents of early modern print culture are a powerful illustration of the utility of this kind of analysis in literary criticism."—John R. Ladd, Modern Language QuarterlyTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Methods and Data 2. A Small New World: Fire, Infection, and Sudden Change in the English Print Network 3. Hubs in the Network: Nicholas Okes and the Making of Infectious Information 4. Radical Betweenness: Eleanor Davies and Mary Cary 5. Weak Ties and the Making of a Strong Poet: John Milton's Early Publishers Epilogue: Future Directions in Networking the Past

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Book SynopsisThis book is about a mad king and a mad duke. With original and iconoclastic readings, Richard van Oort pioneers the reading of Shakespeare as an ethical thinker of the "originary scene," the scene in which humans became conscious of themselves as symbol-using moral and narrative beings. Taking King Lear and Measure for Measure as case studies, van Oort shows how the minimal concept of an anthropological scene of origin—the "originary hypothesis"—provides the basis for a new understanding of every aspect of the plays, from the psychology of the characters to the ethical and dialogical conflicts upon which the drama is based. The result is a gripping commentary on the plays. Why does Lear abdicate and go mad? Why does Edgar torture his father with non-recognition? Why does Lucio accuse the Duke in Measure for Measure of madness and lechery, and why does Isabella remain silent at the end? In approaching these and other questions from the perspective of the originary hypothesis, van Oort helps us to see the ethical predicament of the plays, and, in the process, makes Shakespeare new again.Trade Review"This is criticism of the highest order, whose long, careful readings of King Lear and Measure for Measure are in dialogue with the finest readers of Shakespeare for the past century." —Blair Hoxby, Stanford University"A rigorous yet highly readable attempt to understand Shakespeare and neoclassical drama in general in new terms, Shakespeare's Mad Men demonstrates in admirable detail the analytical power of generative anthropology wielded by a powerful intelligence."—Eric Gans, University of California, Los Angeles"Attentive to both the ruses of bad faith and the truths disclosed by Shakespeare's language, van Oort addresses our human predicament as symbol-making creatures whose search for love is troubled by the ceaseless drive for mastery."—Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine"van Oort's reading is nothing less than a stunning provocation."—Amir Khan, Shakespeare Quarterly"[R]eaders... will find value and pleasure in van Oort's compelling readings, and his clear style makes complex concepts pleasingly accessible."—Molly G. Yarp, Times Literary Supplement"Eminently readable, Shakespeare's Man Men attempts to engage and explain the larger questions the plays raise, particularly why characters behave the way they do and make the choices they do. The readings are original and offer exciting ways to engage with the plays. Highly recommended."—K. J. Wetmore Jr., CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The King's Last Potlatch 2. The Judge, the Duke, His Wife, and Her Lover Conclusion

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Book SynopsisRecent years have witnessed a surge in early modern ecostudies, many devoted to Shakespearean drama. Yet in this burgeoning discipline, travel writing appears moored in historicization, inorganic subjects are far less prevalent than organic ones, and freshwater sites are hardly visited. For All Waters explores these uncharted wetscapes. Lowell Duckert shows that when playwrights and travel writers such as Sir Walter Raleigh physically interacted with rivers, glaciers, monsoons, and swamps, they composed “hydrographies,” or bodily and textual assemblages of human and nonhuman things that dissolved notions of human autonomy and its singular narrativity. With a playful, punning touch woven deftly into its theoretical rigor, For All Waters disputes fantasies of ecological solitude that would keep our selves high and dry and that would try to sustain a political ecology excluding water and the poor. The lives of both humans and waterscapes can be improved simultaneously through direct engagement with wetness. For All Waters concludes by investigating waterscapes in peril today—West Virginia’s chemical rivers and Iceland’s vanishing glaciers—and outlining what we can learn from early moderns’ eco-ontological lessons. By taking their soggy and storied matters to heart, and arriving at a greater realization of our shared wetness, we can conceive new directions to take within the hydropolitical crises afflicting us today.Trade Review"As the ‘hydrological turn’ of literary and cultural studies mixes with traditional green environmentalism and less familiar materialist discourses, early modern studies is entering new waters. With special attention to non-oceanic spaces and non-canonical texts, Lowell Duckert's brilliant and imaginative study makes the case for engaged historicist ecocriticism. In our Anthropocene age of ecological anxieties and catastrophes, Duckert contributes a vision of elemental co-composing that the critical conversation deeply needs."—Steve Mentz, author of Shipwreck Modernity"A fascinating and creative book tasked with bridging early modernity and today’s global ecological crises in a sound, ethical, and philosophically responsible way." —Renaissance QuarterlyTable of ContentsContentsPreface: Shivering, WetIntroduction: Enter, Wet1. Becoming Wa/l/ter2. Going Glacial3. Making (It) Rain4. Mucking UpConclusion: Exit, WetAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn the 1920s a distinctively American detective fiction emerged from the pages of pulp magazines. The \u201chard-boiled\u201d stories published in Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and Clues featured a new kind of hero and soon challenged the popularity of the British mysteries that held readers in thrall on both sides of the Atlantic. In Hard-Boiled Erin A. Smith examines the culture that produced and supported this form of detective story through the 1940s. Relying on pulp magazine advertising, the memoirs of writers and publishers, Depression-era studies of adult reading habits, social and labor history, Smith offers an innovative account of how these popular stories were generated and read. She shows that although the work of pulp fiction authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner have become \u201cclassics\u201d of popular culture, the hard-boiled genre was dominated by hack writers paid by the word, not self-styled artists. Pulp magazine editors and writers emphasized a gritty realism in the new genre. Unlike the highly rational and respectable British protagonists (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, for instance), tough-talking American private eyes relied as much on their fists as their brains as they made their way through tangled plotlines. Casting working-class readers of pulp fiction as \u201cpoachers,\u201d Smith argues that they understood these stories as parables about Taylorism, work, and manhood; as guides to navigating consumer culture; as sites for managing anxieties about working women. Engaged in re-creating white, male privilege for the modern, heterosocial world, pulp detective fiction shaped readers into consumers by selling them what they wanted to hear - stories about manly artisan-heroes who resisted encroaching commodity culture and the female consumers who came with it. Commenting on the genre\u2019s staying power, Smith considers contemporary detective fiction by women, minority, and gay and lesbian writers.Trade Review"Picking up a classic 'hard-boiled' detective novel by Dashiell Hammet or Raymond Chandler-or even modern-day Sara Paretsky-is an entirely different experience after reading Smith's fascinating book. Now the pages of these novels and their close cousins, the pulp magazines, have become rich canvases for working out struggles over readers' class and consumer identities." -Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University "Not until Erin Smith's innovative study have we had such a fully-grounded look at the imagined community of working-class fraternity, masculinity, and consumerism through which pulp audiences interpreted the 'fast-talking' heroes of hard-boiled detective fiction. A lively, engaging book that ranges from the linguistics to the sartorial dimensions of the genre, from labor to cultural capital, from advertising copy to literary theory." -Christopher P. Wilson, author of Cap Knowledge: Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth Century America "Hard-Boiled [is] a valuable contribution to the study of American literature between the wars." -Modern Fiction Studies "Erin Smith's Hard-Boiled is an extremely interesting and well-written analysis of the pulp magazines." -American Literature "Hard-Boiled ably demonstrates that detective pulp fiction functioned contradictorily, simultaneously empowering its readers and keeping them in line. Moreover, Smith's careful research persuasively reconstructs the proletarian readers who left no written records of their experience, thus making a substantial contribution to the field of working-class studies." -The Journal of American History "One of the few works of pure American Studies that I have as yet encountered, Hard-Boiled is a work of interdisciplinary scholarship..." -Journal of Social History "...offers a thoroughly inventive approach to sensational crime fiction... Smith's deft readings demonstrate the often surprising ambiguity of the pulps' gender, labor, and consumer politics." -Novel: A Forum on FictionTable of ContentsCONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction PART I: Reconstructing Readers 1. The Hard-Boiled Writer and the Literary Marketplace 2. The Adman on the Shop Floor: Workers, Consumer Culture, and the Pulps PART II: Reading Hard-Boiled Fiction 3. Proletarian Plots 4. Dressed to Kill 5. Talking Tough 6. The Office Wife Afterword Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIn the 1920s a distinctively American detective fiction emerged from the pages of pulp magazines. The \u201chard-boiled\u201d stories published in Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and Clues featured a new kind of hero and soon challenged the popularity of the British mysteries that held readers in thrall on both sides of the Atlantic. In Hard-Boiled Erin A. Smith examines the culture that produced and supported this form of detective story through the 1940s. Relying on pulp magazine advertising, the memoirs of writers and publishers, Depression-era studies of adult reading habits, social and labor history, Smith offers an innovative account of how these popular stories were generated and read. She shows that although the work of pulp fiction authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner have become \u201cclassics\u201d of popular culture, the hard-boiled genre was dominated by hack writers paid by the word, not self-styled artists. Pulp magazine editors and writers emphasized a gritty realism in the new genre. Unlike the highly rational and respectable British protagonists (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, for instance), tough-talking American private eyes relied as much on their fists as their brains as they made their way through tangled plotlines. Casting working-class readers of pulp fiction as \u201cpoachers,\u201d Smith argues that they understood these stories as parables about Taylorism, work, and manhood; as guides to navigating consumer culture; as sites for managing anxieties about working women. Engaged in re-creating white, male privilege for the modern, heterosocial world, pulp detective fiction shaped readers into consumers by selling them what they wanted to hear - stories about manly artisan-heroes who resisted encroaching commodity culture and the female consumers who came with it. Commenting on the genre\u2019s staying power, Smith considers contemporary detective fiction by women, minority, and gay and lesbian writers.Trade Review"Picking up a classic 'hard-boiled' detective novel by Dashiell Hammet or Raymond Chandler-or even modern-day Sara Paretsky-is an entirely different experience after reading Smith's fascinating book. Now the pages of these novels and their close cousins, the pulp magazines, have become rich canvases for working out struggles over readers' class and consumer identities." -Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University "Not until Erin Smith's innovative study have we had such a fully-grounded look at the imagined community of working-class fraternity, masculinity, and consumerism through which pulp audiences interpreted the 'fast-talking' heroes of hard-boiled detective fiction. A lively, engaging book that ranges from the linguistics to the sartorial dimensions of the genre, from labor to cultural capital, from advertising copy to literary theory." -Christopher P. Wilson, author of Cap Knowledge: Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth Century America "Hard-Boiled [is] a valuable contribution to the study of American literature between the wars." -Modern Fiction Studies "Erin Smith's Hard-Boiled is an extremely interesting and well-written analysis of the pulp magazines." -American Literature "Hard-Boiled ably demonstrates that detective pulp fiction functioned contradictorily, simultaneously empowering its readers and keeping them in line. Moreover, Smith's careful research persuasively reconstructs the proletarian readers who left no written records of their experience, thus making a substantial contribution to the field of working-class studies." -The Journal of American History "One of the few works of pure American Studies that I have as yet encountered, Hard-Boiled is a work of interdisciplinary scholarship..." -Journal of Social History "...offers a thoroughly inventive approach to sensational crime fiction... Smith's deft readings demonstrate the often surprising ambiguity of the pulps' gender, labor, and consumer politics." -Novel: A Forum on FictionTable of ContentsCONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction PART I: Reconstructing Readers 1. The Hard-Boiled Writer and the Literary Marketplace 2. The Adman on the Shop Floor: Workers, Consumer Culture, and the Pulps PART II: Reading Hard-Boiled Fiction 3. Proletarian Plots 4. Dressed to Kill 5. Talking Tough 6. The Office Wife Afterword Notes Index

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Book SynopsisWhat is the effect of a \u0022nation\u0022? In this age of globalization, is it dead, dying, or only dormant? The essays in this groundbreaking volume use the arts in Mexico to move beyond the national and the global to look at the activity of a community continually re-creating itself within and beyond its own borders. Mexico is a particularly apt focus, partly because of the vitality of its culture, partly because of its changing political identity, and partly because of the impact of borders and borderlessness on its national character. The ten essays collected here look at a wide range of aesthetic productions -- especially literature and the visual arts -- that give context to how art and society interact. Steering a careful course between the nostalgia of nationalism and the insensitivity of globalism, these essays examine modernism and postmodernism in the Mexican setting. Individually, they explore the incorporation of historical icons, of vanguardism, and of international influence. From Diego Rivera to Elena Garro, from the Tlateloco massacre to the Chiapas rebellion, from mass-market fiction to the film Aliens, the contributors view the many sides of Mexican life as relevant to the creation of a constantly shifting national culture. Taken together, the essays look both backward and forward at the evolving effect of the Mexican nation.Trade Review"Broad enough to appeal to a wide audience of Mexicanists, while at the same time focused around a specific set of issues, The Effects of the Nation is a strong collection of essays, both well-conceived and well written. The dual focus on literature and visual art strengthens the book by suggesting connections among various Mexican intellectual circles and the cultural industries. The result should appeal to both literary scholars and art historians." -Claire Fox, author of The Fence and the River: Culture and Politics at the U.S.-Mexican Border "The diversity of these essays reveals an interlocking strength built upon a common thematic, without coming across individually as narrowly construed or atomized. There is a wonderful overlap as well as tension between the essays, notably in the ways that the authors approach the question of representation and power in the Mexican national (and transnational) space. The publication of this collection will come at a fortuitous moment, when academic interest in Mexican studies is breaking free of earlier agendas." -Eric Zolov, Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Franklin and Marshall College and author of Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture "The essays in this book use the arts in Mexico to move away from the national and the global, to look at the activity of a community continually recreating itself within and beyond its own borders. The essays examine a wide range of aesthetic productions-especially literature and the visual arts-that give context to how art and society interact." -Hispanic OutlookTable of ContentsIntroduction: Ungoverned Specificities - Carl Good 1. Mexican Art on Display - Olivier Debroise 2. Mathias Goeritz: Emotional Architecture and Creating a Mexican National Art - Juan Bruce-Novoa 3. Corporeal Identities in Mexican Art: Modern and Postmodern Strategies - Karen Cordero Reiman 4. Elena Poniatowska's Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela: A Revision of Her Story - Susan C. Schaffer 5. "Un octubre manchado se detiene": Memory and Testimony in the Poetry of David Huerta - Jacobo Sefami 6. Aesthetic Criteria and the Literary Market in Mexico: The Changing Shape of Quality, 1982-1994 - Danny J. Anderson 7. Un hogar insolito: Elena Garro and Mexican Literary Culture - Rebecca E. Biron 8. Rene Derouin: Dialogues with Mexico - Montserrat Gali Boadella 9. Unhomely Feminine: Rosina Conde - Debra A. Castillo 10. The Postmodern Hybrid: Do Aliens Dream of Alien Sheep? - Rolando Romero About the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisThis is a comprehensive guide to the writing career of the author of ""Angels in America"".""Understanding Tony Kushner"" surveys the acclaimed writings of the author of the Pulitzer Prize - winning drama ""Angels in America"" and coauthor of the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the film ""Munich"". Viewing Kushner as a sociopolitical dramatist in the tradition of Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, and Bertolt Brecht, James Fisher guides readers through Kushner's influences and creations to map the importance of the writer's body of work in expanding the postmodern literary and cultural landscapes. After grounding his discussions in Kushner's early plays, ""A Bright Room Called Day"" and ""Hydriotaphia"", or ""The Death of Dr. Brown"", Fisher engages with the two plays of ""Angels in America"" to identify the major themes to be revisited in subsequent works. Fisher reads the depiction of the clash of values in the mid-1980s in Angels as Kushner's placement of humanity's fate at the nexus of divergent views on morality, politics, religion, history, gender, and sexuality, views that complicate individual and national identity and beg the overarching question, is change to be embraced or challenged? Fisher concludes with an exploration of how Kushner moves his themes from stage to screen in Munich and the forthcoming film Lincoln, both directed by Steven Spielberg.

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Book SynopsisThis revised edition provides a comprehensive view of the thematic structure of Wilson's plays, the placement of his work within the context of American drama, and the distinctively African American experiences and traditions that he dramatizes. It includes a revised introduction, revised chapters, and material from interviews with seminal figures in Wilson's personal and professional life.

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Book SynopsisAnnual collection of essays, this year treating works by Donne, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Spenser, among other topics. Renaissance Papers is a collection of the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The conference accepts papers on all subjects relating to the Renaissance -- music, art, history, literature, etc. -- from scholars all over North America and the world. Of the nine essays in the 2002 volume, three have to do with John Donne; among the topics here are Donne and Pietro Aretino, Donne and "All the World," andauthorial intention in the Holy Sonnets. Two essays deal with Shakespeare, specifically the discourse of dilution in 2 Henry IV and the Ovidian underworld in Othello. Other essays treat Marvell and the temporality of paranoia; poetry, patronage, and identity in Spenser's The Faerie Queene; and the visual culture of the Elizabethan prodigy house. Contributors: Nicholas Crawford, Dennis Flynn, Heather Hirschfeld, Pamela Royston Macfie, Anne E. McIlhaney, Graham Roebuck, Gary Stringer, James M. Sutton, Alzada Tipton. M. Thomas Hester is professor of English at North Carolina State UniversityTable of ContentsPastoral Community and the Hooks of Memory: The Mnemonic Landscape of Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler (1653)Compleat Angler (1653) - Anne E. McIlhaney Marvell and the Temporality of Paranoia - Heather Hirschfeld Familiar Letters: Donne and Pietro Aretino - Dennis A. Flynn The Discourse of Dilution in 2 Henry IV - Nicholas Crawford John Donne and "All the World" - Graham Roebuck Poetry, Patronage, and Identity in the Dance of the Graces, Book VI of The Faerie Queene - Alzada Tipton The "Allurement of Liking" and the "Contention of the Eyes": Decoding the Visual Culture of the Elizabethan Prodigy House - James M. Sutton Discovering Authorial Intention in the Manuscript Sequences of Donne's Holy Sonnets - Gary Stringer

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Book SynopsisCutting-edge criticism on major aspects of Goethe's best-known work. Undisputedly a canonical work, Goethe's Faust is also the key to understanding its author, one of European civilization's most complex figures. Written over several decades, the work spans both Goethe's life and an age of enormous social, political, philosophical, and artistic change - even revolution. In this volume, Goethe scholars and experts from Europe and North America explore major aspects of this fascinating work, offering a cutting-edge guide to both reader and scholar. Contributors: Ritchie Robertson, Martin Swales, Alberto Destro, Osman Durrani, Ellis Dye, John R. Williams, Anthony Phelan, Franziska Schößler, Peter D. Smith, Cyrus Hamlin, R.H. Stephenson, David Luke, Robert David McDonald Paul Bishop is William Jacks Chair of Modern Languages at the University of Glasgow.Trade ReviewEach essay presents an interesting aspect of Faust research, and the volume as a whole can be used as a very informative reference work. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *...as a coherent, accessible, often masterful introduction to a vast and complex work, this volume fulfills its promise....There is, without question, an awe-inspiring critical sovereignty and breadth in this book. * GOETHE YEARBOOK *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Reading Faust Today - Paul Bishop Literary Techniques and Aesthetic Texture in Faust - Ritchie Robertson The Character and Characterization of Faust - Martin Swales The Guilty Hero, or the Tragic Salvation of Faust - Alberto Destro The Character and Qualities of Mephistopheles - Osman Durrani Figurations of the Feminine in Goethe's Faust - Ellis Dye - DECEASED IN 2017 The Problem of the Mothers - John R. Williams The Classical and the Medieval in Faust II - Anthony Phelan Progress and Restorative Utopia in Faust II and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre - Franziska Schößler "Was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhält": Scientific Themes in Goethe's Faust - Peter Smith Goethe's Faust and the Philosophers - Cyrus Hamlin The Diachronic Solidity of Goethe's Faust - R.H. Stephenson Translating Faust: A Personal Statement - F.D. Luke Faust: The Play in Production - Robert David MacDonald

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Book SynopsisA reassessment of genre that fills a major gap in Goethe's oeuvre and initiates a radically new reading of Faust. Goethe has long been enshrined as the greatest German poet, but his admirers have always been uneasy with the idea that he did not produce a great epic poem. A master in all the other genres and modes, it has been felt, should have done so. Arnd Bohm proposes that Goethe did compose an epic poem, which has been hidden in plain view: Faust. Goethe saw that the Faust legends provided the stuff for a national epic: a German hero, a villain (Mephistopheles), a quest (to know all things), a sublime conflict (good versus evil), a love story (via Helen of Troy), and elasticity (all human knowledge could be accommodated by the plot). Bohm reveals the care with which Goethe draws upon such sources as Tasso, Ariosto, Dante, and Vergil. In the microcosm of the "Auerbachs Keller" episode Faust has the opportunity to find "what holds the world together in its essence" and to end his quest happily, but he fails. He forgets the future because he cannot remember what epic teaches. His course ends tragically, bringing him back to the origin of epic, as he replicates the Trojans' mistake of presuming to cheat the gods. Arnd Bohm isAssociate Professor of English at Carleton University, Ottawa.Trade ReviewWinner of the 2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award * . *A bold undertaking by a careful scholar, this book displays an impressive grasp of its supporting materials. Bohm challenges readers to view Faust in interesting new ways and supports his discussion with extraordinary footnotes. ... Imaginative comparisons with earlier epics furnish new insights. ... The final pages of the book offer an excellent summary. * CHOICE *Bohm has brought considerable new light to the intertextual archaeology of Faust and thereby has lent new impulses to Faust criticism. His subtle philological study belongs therefore in the library of any serious Faust reader. * MONATSHEFTE *Goethe's Faust and European Epic is an ambitious book, setting out to demonstrate 'that Faust properly belongs in the sequence of works ... that together constitute the system of European epic.'... Bohm's treatment of the European epic as a dynamic system does a good job of drawing out the aspects of that vast system that are most promising for a reading of Faust, and of allowing these to stand as representative features of the tradition. * CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE *[A] work of extraordinary complexity and sophistication.. When it comes to intimate knowledge and understanding of Goethe's great work and its place amid European letters, [Bohm] ranks with the best. * SEMINAR *The strength of the book lies ... in its deceptively broad learnedness. It deals not only with the history of the epic tradition, but also ... with the great corpus of recent English-language research on the epic of the Renaissance and of the Empire, with the hermeneutics of the epic, and with the interrelationship of natural sciences, magic, and mysticism in the early modern period. * GOETHE JAHRBUCH *Table of ContentsIntroduction Goethe's Epic Ambitions The System of European Epic Faust and Epic History The Roots of Evil "Auerbachs Keller" and Epic History Faust as a Christian Epic The Epic Encyclopedia Postscript: Lest We Forget Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisAt last an engaging and highly readable guide to the works and significance of Goethe. The year 1999 saw the 250th anniversary of the birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer. Appropriately, literary scholars within Germany and beyond paid tribute to this remarkable talent. But a number of commentators also noted that Goethe is often revered rather than read, known of rather than known. This study remedies this state of affairs by offering an introduction to Goethe and his works for the English-speaking reader -- now inpaperback and with all quotations. The authors concentrate on the literary work and offer analyses that represent an impassioned, but by no means uncritical, advocacy -- one that seeks to persuade both academic critics and general readers alike that Goethe is one of the key figures of European modernity. To an extent that is virtually unique in modern literature, Goethe was active in a whole number of literary genres. He was a superb poet, unrivaled in the variety of his expressive modes, and in his ability to combine intellectual sophistication withexperiential immediacy. He also wrote short stories and novels throughout his life, ranging from the The Sorrows of Young Werther, to The Elective Affinities. He was also a highly skilled dramatist, both in the historical mode and in the classical verse-drama. Above all else, Goethe is the author of Faust: a work that attempts -- and achieves -- more than any other modern European drama. Martin Swales is Professor of German at University College London. Erika Swales is College Lecturer and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.Trade ReviewRecipient of CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award, 2002 * . *Presents a judicious corrective, not only to the tradition of uncritical adulation of Goethe as a cultural monument, but also to some twentieth-century caricatures of Goethe as an escapist poet of untroubled serenity and comforting affirmation. -- John R. Williams, University of St. AndrewsAn invaluable companion reference. * LIBRARY BOOKWATCH *[I]mmense in scale, succinct in its explicit and elaborate readings of Goethe texts, and profound in its assessments of Goethe's accomplishments as a writer. * GERMAN QUARTERLY *An example of excellent scholarship, sensitivity, and attention to the * . *The authors pack in an astonishing number of stimulating suggestions ... For this reader, the close readings of selected poems were outstanding, as were the discussions of 'Goetz,' 'Egmont,' 'Iphigenie,' and 'Tasso,' which put forward concentrated and arresting arguments about each play. * BRITISH JOURNAL OF 18TH-c. STUDIES *...a very good and often thought-provoking read...Mature, experienced, and considered opinions on important works of Goethe. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Poetry Narrative Fiction Drama Faust Goethe's Discursive Writings Conclusion Notes Works Consulted and Works for Further Reading Index

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive advanced introduction to and scholarly commentary on the work of the Swiss writer Max Frisch, one of the leading German-language dramatists and novelists of the late twentieth century. One of the most influential German-language writers of the late twentieth century, Max Frisch (1911-1991) not only has canonical status in Europe, but has also been well received in the English-speaking world. English translationsof his works are available in multiple recent editions. Frisch was a recipient of both the Büchner Award (1958), and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1976); his body of work explores questions of identity, alienation, and ethics in modern society. He is best known for the plays Andorra (1961), a seminal drama that examines indifference and mass psychology in the context of the Shoah and continues to be produced by theaters around the world, and Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1958), another worldwide success and one of the most frequently used texts in advanced undergraduate German courses in the United States, as well as for his novels Stiller (1954), Homo Faber (1957), and Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964). Yet Frisch has only recently begun to receive the sustained scholarly attention he deserves: neither a comprehensive introductory volume to nor a collaborative handbook on the works of Frisch is available in English, a situation that this volume redresses. Contributors: Régine Battiston, Klaus van den Berg, Olaf Berwald, Amanda Charitina Boyd, Céline Letawe, Walter Obschlager, John D. Pizer, Beatrice Sandberg, Caroline Schaumann, Frank Schaumann, Walter Schmitz, Margit Unser, Daniel de Vin, Ruth Vogel-Klein, Paul A. Youngman. Olaf Berwald is Professor of German and Chair of the Departmentof Foreign Languages at Kennesaw State University.Trade ReviewThis companion volume will prove rewarding for students and scholars of Frisch's work and for those familiar with Frisch's ?ction and non-fiction. [It] provides the student and scholar with fresh insights, new critical approaches, and an overview of the secondary literature. * MONATSHEFTE *Given the canonical status enjoyed by Max Frisch . . . , this volume has been a long time coming. It enhances in particular the relatively scant English-speaking secondary literature on Frisch. . . . The volume as a whole offers the reader a well-rounded picture of Frisch's works, their literary context and influences, and thematic affinities with the works of other writers. . . . With some particularly discerning contributions, the volume is an important and informative contribution to Frisch studies in English. . . . [E]ither in hardback or as an e-book, it is a handsome Companion and an essential library acquisition. -- Siobhán Donovan * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *This is a true companion to the works of Max Frisch . . ., not, as some 'companions' are, a collection of loosely connected conference papers assembled as an afterthought. There are informative chapters on all the genres Frisch worked in . . . . Frisch's speeches and essays are [also] discussed. . . . Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Max Frisch in the Twenty-First Century Max Frisch's Early Plays Spielraum in Max Frisch's Graf Öderland and Don Juan: Transparency as Mode of Performance Max Frisch's Biedermann und die Brandstifter and Die große Wut des Philipp Hotz Max Frisch's Andorra: Balancing Act between Pattern and Particular Eternal Recurrence in Life and Death in Max Frisch's Late Plays Max Frisch's Early Fiction From Life to Literature: Max Frisch's Frisch's Tagebücher "Writing in order to be a stranger to oneself": Max Frisch's Stiller Cybernetic Flow, Analogy, and Probability in Max Frisch's Homo Faber The Ends of Blindness in Max Frisch's Mein Name sei Gantenbein Max Frisch's Montauk. Eine Erzählung Man, Culture, and Nature in Max Frisch's Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän "My life as a man. Everyman": Max Frisch's Blaubart. Erzählung Max Frisch's Essays and Speeches Frisch's Major Works Select Bibliography Notes on the Contributors Index

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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"".

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Book SynopsisThe most striking difference between Othello and Shakespeare's other tragedies is its more intimate scale. Since the play focuses on personal rather than public life, Othello's private descent into jealous obsession is 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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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