This volume explores Shakespeare's interest in pity, an emotion that serves as an important catalyst for action within the plays, even as it generates one of the audience's most common responses to tragic drama in the theater. For Shakespeare, the word "pity" contained a broader range of meaning than it does in modern English, and was often associated with ideas such as mercy, compassion, charity, pardon, and clemency. This cluster of ideas provides Shakespeare's characters with a rich range of possibilities for engaging some of humanity's deepest emotional commitments, in which pity can be seen as a powerful stimulus for fostering social harmony, love, and forgiveness. However, Shakespeare also dramatizes pity's potential for deception, when the appeal to pity is not genuine, and conceals contrary motives of vengeance and cruelty. As Shakespeare's works remain relevant for modern audiences and readers, so too does his dramatization of the powerful ways in which emotions such as pity remain essential to our understanding of our shared humanity and of our awareness of compassion's role in our own private and civic lives.

Dr Richard Ryder has played a creative role in developing new ethical ideas for over 30 years and was part of a small group of Oxford writers in the early 1970s who revived interest in the ethical treatment of animals. Including animals within the moral circle was itself a revolutionary step and one that has begun to bear fruit in the new body of legislation protecting animals internationally. These ideas helped pioneer the modern interest in applied ethics generally. Ryder's concept of speciesism is now widely debated in philosophical circles, and indeed has had an entry in the Oxford Dictionary since 1985. Ryder. Painism, a term Ryder coined in 1990, is the word he employs to describe his unique ethical position. Painism goes far wider than the treatment of animals, and also covers human situations, many of which are examined in this book - often with provocative and controversial results. Painism's implications for human society are quite considerable, not least because of its insistence that the quantity of sufferers affected by any event is irrelevant; instead, all is judged by the pain of the individual who suffers most. Thus painism stands between, and to an extent forms a bridge between, the two great rival theories in modern ethics: Utilitarianism and Rights Theory.

This volume re-examines traditional interpretations of the rise of modern aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain and Germany. It provides a new account that connects aesthetic experience with morality, science, and political society. In doing so, it challenges long-standing teleological narratives that emphasize disinterestedness and the separation of aesthetics from moral, cognitive, and political interests. The chapters are divided into three thematic parts. The chapters in Part I demonstrate the heteronomy of eighteenth-century British aesthetics. They chart the evolution of aesthetic concepts and discuss the ethical and political significance of the aesthetic theories of several key figures: namely, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Part II explores the ways in which eighteenth-century German, and German-oriented, thinkers examine aesthetic experience and moral concerns, and relate to the work of their British counterparts. The chapters here cover the work of Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Madame de Stael. Finally, Part III explores the interrelation of science, aesthetics, and a new model of society in the work of Goethe, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, Friedrich Hoelderlin, and William Hazlitt, among others. This volume develops unique discussions of the rise of aesthetic autonomy in the eighteenth century. In bringing together well-known scholars working on British and German eighteenth-century aesthetics, philosophy, and literature, it will appeal to scholars and advanced students in a range of disciplines who are interested in this topic.

An intriguing case study on how popular images of Oceania, mediated through a developing culture of celebrity, contributed to the formation of British identity both domestically and as a nascent imperial power in the eighteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century metropolitan Britain was entranced by stories emanating from the furthest edge of its nascent empire. In the experience of eighteenth-century Britain, Oceania was both a real place, evidencedby the journals of adventurers like Joseph Banks, the voyage books of Captain James Cook and the growing collection of artefacts and curiosities in the British Museum, and a realm of fantasy reflected in theatre, fashion and the new phenomenon of mass print. In this innovative study Ruth Scobie shows how these multiple images of Oceania were filtered to a wider British public through the gradual emergence of a new idea of fame - commodified, commercial, scandalous - which bore in some respects a striking resemblance to modern celebrity culture and which made figures such as Banks and Cook, Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers on Pitcairn Island into public icons. Bringing together literary texts, works of popular culture, visual art and theatrical performance, Scobie argues that the idea of Oceania functioned variously as reflection, ideal and parody both in very local debates over the problemsof contemporary fame and in wider considerations of national identity, race and empire. RUTH SCOBIE is a Stipendiary Lecturer at Mansfield College, University of Oxford.

Misogyny and its opposite, philogyny, have been perennial topics in Western literature from its earliest days to the present day, but only at certain historic periods have pro-woman authors challenged fundamental negative assumptions about women by engaging in formal debate with misogynists and juxtaposing these two attitudes toward women in pairs or series of texts devoted exclusively to discussing womankind. This dialectic of attack on and defence of the female sex, known as the querelle des femmes (debate about women), was especially popular among authors and readers during the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries in England. At least 36 texts exclusively devoted to attacking and/or defending women were published in the hundred years between 1540 and 1640. The works included in these two volumes exemplify the content and the methods of debate in England during those two centuries. Volume one includes texts from 1521 through to 1615.

Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare's original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises 'the play' is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink

Devils, witches and evil - the insubstantial but terrifying world of the supernatural as it was seen by Robert Burns and his contemporaries is examined in this new book, brought out for the 250th anniversary of the poet's birth. Several of Burns' poems dealt with the supernatural, the most famous of which, "Tam o Shanter", is examined in detail. It is from this poem that the book's title comes: 'And roars out, "Weel done, Cutty-sark!" And in an instant all was dark And scarcely had he Maggie rallied When out the hellish legion sallied.' In contrast with the 'other world' was the everyday lives of the country people and the nature of the material world in which they lived; the book also examines this and the changes that were taking place in Burns' time.

The Tower of London in English Renaissance Drama historicizes the Tower of London's evolving meanings in English culture alongside its representation in twenty-four English history plays, 1579-c.1634, by Thomas Legge; Robert Greene; William Shakespeare; Shakespeare and John Fletcher; George Peele; Christopher Marlowe; Anthony Munday et. al; Munday, Michael Drayton, Robert Wilson, and Richard Hathway; Thomas Heywood; Thomas Dekker and John Webster; Samuel Rowley; Robert Davenport; John Ford; and unknown authors. While Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I fashioned the Tower as a showplace of royal authority, magnificence, and entertainment, these playwrights revealed the Tower's instability as a royal symbol and represented it, instead, as an emblem of opposition to the crown and as a bodily and spiritual icon of non-royal English identity.

Ties in with #metoo movement so has very broad potential appeal Blends contemporary examples with Shakespearean texts so will appeal to students Written in a very accessible style so appropriate for courses Focuses on three of Shakespeare's most commonly studied texts so will slot easily into courses

This set provides a detailed and intimate account of the Elizabethan and Jacobean World picture. The volumes vividly convey life as it was in the days of Shakespeare; King James; the first voyage to the West Indies; the Great Plague of 1603; the Gunpowder Plot; the Civil War, and the first impact of Galileo's discoveries. In compiling these volumes, G.B. Harrison undertook a massive trawl of original sources of British social and political history of the period. Each journal contains a chronology of key events of the period, unfolding as they would for contemporaries. This rare panorama of one of England's most colourful periods in history provides an essential background for enlightened reading of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, offering as it does, crucial insights into influences affecting the literature and attitudes of the time.

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read the material themselves.

Comprises of individual volumes on: Thomas Wyatt, John Donne, George Herbert and Andrew Marvell. The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read the material themselves.

"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling student and researcher to read the material themselves.

The Diaries of Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821) are rare and fragile documents which present a unique view of Romantic-era Britain. An energetic woman, Inchbald achieved fame as an actress, novelist, playwright and critic. Her career introduced her to a wide group of people and she counted William Godwin, Thomas Holcroft, Maria Edgeworth, Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble among her friends. Published here for the first time, her eleven surviving diaries are a fascinating vignette of everyday life in the theatrical and literary circles of eighteenth-century London. They record Inchbald's reading habits, social contacts and professional activities, itemize her day-to-day expenditure, and chart the development of current affairs such as the Napoleonic Wars and the trial of Queen Caroline. The diaries are fully transcribed, but a sense of the original documents is preserved through selected photographic reproductions, and descriptions of the physical notebooks. The editorial apparatus also contextualises the diaries and provides biographical details for Inchbald and the other figures she encountered. Full editorial apparatus includes a substantial general introduction, a chronology of Inchbald's life, brief introductions to each diary, bibliographical guides to figures mentioned, and textual notes. There is a consolidated index in the final volume.

Medical, popular, and literary understanding about the imagination converged when Thomas Willis asserted that he had discovered the area of the brain that facilitated imagining. Taking this 'discovery' as paradigmatic, Novel Notions examines the reverberations of the medical investigation of the imagination in early British novels by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Ann Radcliffe. It argues that one of the novel's central features was a mapping of the terrain of human cognition, imagination, and creation, as a continuation of early modern medicine's account of perceptual experience. All the novels discussed reveal a simultaneous anxiety and excitement about medicine's understanding of the relationship between the imagination and perceptual experience through narrators who reflect on the nature of authoring.

Comprises of individual volumes on: Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and John Webster. The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase oxes) and as individual volumes.

This set comprises of separate volumes on: Earl of Rochester, John Dryden, William Congreve, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift. Routledge is pleased to publish the Collected edition of the Critical Heritage series. The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling student and reserchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 67 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

Elizabeth Cellier, the scandalous celebrity known as the 'Popish midwife', became the focus of a large number of pamphlets in 1680: accounts of her two trials, her self-vindication, Malice Defeated, her opponent Thomas Dangerfield's rejoinder, and various anonymous satiric attacks against her. She was tried twice: the first time for the more serious charge of treason, and the second for libel, for publishing Malice Defeated. She was acquitted the first time, but found guilty the second, though her punishment was to be pilloried, not executed. She reemerges as the author of tracts on midwifery, proposing to James II the establishment of a professional guild of midwives. Her writings exhibit her remarkable determination to publish her accusations of government torture and her advocation of the licensing of midwives as professional women, as well as exemplifying the importance of the printing press for enabling women to participate in the political public sphere.

Combining historical and interpretive work, this collection examines changing perceptions of and relations between human and nonhuman animals in Britain over the long eighteenth century. Persistent questions concern modes of representing animals and animal-human hybrids, as well as the ethical issues raised by the human uses of other animals. From the animal men of Thomas Rowlandson to the part animal-part human creature of Victor Frankenstein, hybridity serves less as a metaphor than as a metonym for the intersections of humans and other animals. The contributors address such recurring questions as the implications of the Enlightenment project of naming and classifying animals, the equating of non-European races and nonhuman animals in early ethnographic texts, and the desire to distinguish the purely human from the entirely nonhuman animal. Gulliver's Travels and works by Mary and Percy Shelley emerge as key texts for this study. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students who work in animal, colonial, gender, and cultural studies; and will appeal to general readers concerned with the representation of animals and their treatment by humans.

Rhetoric has long been a powerful and pervasive force in political and cultural life, yet in the early modern period, rhetorical training was generally reserved as a masculine privilege. This volume argues, however, that women found a variety of ways to represent their interests persuasively, and that by looking more closely at the importance of rhetoric for early modern women, and their representation within rhetorical culture, we also gain a better understanding of their capacity for political action. Offering a fascinating overview of women and rhetoric in early modern culture, the contributors to this book: examine constructions of female speech in a range of male-authored texts, from Shakespeare to Milton and Marvell trace how women interceded on behalf of clients or family members, proclaimed their spiritual beliefs and sought to influence public opinion explore the most significant forms of female rhetorical self-representation in the period, including supplication, complaint and preaching demonstrate how these forms enabled women from across the social spectrum, from Elizabeth I to the Quaker Dorothy Waugh, to intervene in political life. Drawing upon incisive analysis of a wide range of literary texts including poetry, drama, prose polemics, letters and speeches, Rhetoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England presents an important new perspective on the early modern world, forms of rhetoric, and the role of women in the culture and politics of the time.

Dreams have been significant in many different cultures, carrying messages about this world and others, posing problems about knowledge, truth, and what it means to be human. This thought-provoking collection of essays explores dreams and visions in early modern Europe, canvassing the place of the dream and dream-theory in texts and in social movements. In topics ranging from the dreams of animals to the visions of Elizabeth I, and from prophetic dreams to ghosts in political writing, this book asks what meanings early modern people found in dreams.

A transcription and translation of Zaharje Orfelin's 1757 festival book, Festive Greeting to Mojsej Putnik, this book is one of the most comprehensive accounts of the festival life of the Orthodox hierarchy in the Habsburg lands. While the Festive Greeting remained just an outline for the spectacle and was never publicly performed in its entirety, it remains a fascinating embodiment of Church politics, an issue too dangerous to be made public in the political arena of the Catholic Empire. In addition to the transcription and translation of the festival book, Jelena Todorovic provides a full account of the background to the Mojsije Putnik's episcopal investiture, beginning with a study of the political and historical context to the foundation and establishment of the Orthodox Archbishopric in the Austrian Habsburg and moving on to an examine the religious politics of the Orthodox Archbishops during this period. With detailed surveys of the book's illustrations, proposed scenography and music, it concludes with an assessment of the place of the Festive Greeting in the history of spectacles in the Archbishopric as well as in the history of the Orthodox Church.

Following the editors' introduction to the collection, the essays in Scholarly Milton examine the nature of Milton's own formidable scholarship and its implications for his prose and poetry-"scholarly Milton" the writer-as well as subsequent scholars' historical and theoretical framing of Milton studies as an object of scholarly attention-"scholarly Milton" as at first an emergent and later an established academic discipline. The essays are particularly concerned with the topics of the ethical ends of learning, of Milton's attention to the trivium within the Renaissance humanist educational system, and the development of scholarly commentary on Milton's writings. Originally selected from the best essays presented at the 2015 Conference on John Milton in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the essays have been considerably revised and expanded for publication.

First published in 1956. Arthur Waley here presents an engrossing account of the works and life of Yuan Mei (1716-1797), the best-known poet of his time. Gaiety is the keynote of his works and the poet was a friend of the Manchu official with whom Commodore Anson had dramatic dealings at Canton in 1743. Yuan Mei gives an account (not previously translated) of Anson's interview with the Manchu authorities. The book contains many translations of Yuan Mei's verse and prose.