A leading cultural historian of premodern Japan draws a rich portrait of the emerging samurai culture as it is portrayed in gunki-mono, or war tales, examining eight major works spanning the mid-tenth to late fourteenth centuries. Although many of the major war tales have been translated into English, Warriors of Japan is the first book-length study of the tales and their place in Japanese history. The war tales are one of the most important sources of knowledge about Japan's premodern warriors, revealing much about the medieval psyche and the evolving perceptions of warriors, warfare, and warrior customs.

Eighteenth-Century Characters offers a concise introduction to the eighteenth century, using characters as its starting point. Elaine M. McGirr presents contextualized readings of stock characters from canonical and popular literature, such as: - the rake and the fop - the country gentleman - the good woman - the coquette and the prude - the country maid and the town lady - the Catholic, the Protestant and the British Other. Each chapter explores how a character's significance and role changes over the century, illustrating and explaining radical shifts in taste, ideology and style. Also featuring illustrations, a Chronology and a helpful Bibliography and Further Reading section, this essential guide will provide students with the necessary background to understand the period's literature and to embark on further study.

An approachable guide to Shakespeare on film, this book establishes the differences between stage and screen. It covers the history of Shakespeare on the screen since 1899, and discusses various modes and conventions of adaptations. Thoroughly updated to include the most recent films, for instance Joss Whedon's 2013 Much Ado About Nothing, it also explores the latest technology, such as DVD and Blu-ray, as well as live stage-to-screen productions. It also includes an exclusive interview with filmmaker John Wyver, discussing his own adaptations for the small screen.

John Milton's many and various works include magnificent poems, polemics, history, theology, and treatises on political, ecclesiastical, educational, and social issues. No writer before Milton defined himself so self-consciously as an author - both in prose and in poetry - as his God-given vocation.

In her detailed account of Milton's life and career, Barbara Lewalski provides a close analysis of his prose and poetry, focusing on the development of his ideas and his art. She shows how Milton, even as a young poet, constructed himself as a new kind of author, commanding astonishing resources of learning and artistry to develop a radical politics, reformist poetics, and an inherently revolutionary prophetic voice.

This insightful portrayal of Milton's life, thought, and writing, as well as his contribution to public life, is an important, stimulating, and timely contribution to Milton scholarship.

This "Concise Companion" launches students into the study of English Renaissance literature through the central contexts that informed it.
Places the poetry within contexts such as: economics; religion; empire and exploration; education, humanism and rhetoric; censorship and patronage; royal marriage and succession; treason and rebellion; "others" in England; private lives; cosmology and the body; and life-writing.
Incorporates recent developments in the field, as well as work soon to be published.
Entices students to explore the subject further.
Provides new syntheses that will be of interest to scholars.
All the contributors are highly regarded scholars and teachers.

Drawing on a range of works from the English Renaissance, Death and Drama in Renaissance England offers a novel way to understand, in their original contexts, key aspects of Renaissance mental life and letters. Focusing on the classical Memory Arts, William Engel explores issues of death and decline in exemplary dramas, dictionaries, and histories of the period, and demonstrates the ways in which emblems and memory images were used to communicate special meanings.

On the night of November 4th 1605, the English authorities uncovered an alleged plot by a group of discontented Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament with the lords, princes, queen and king in attendance. The failure of the plot is celebrated to this day and is known as Guy Fawkes Day. In Poets, Players and Preachers, Anne James explores the literary responses to the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in poetry, drama, and sermons. This book is the first full-length study of the literary repercussions of the conspiracy. By analyzing the genres of poems, plays, and sermons produced between 1605 and 1688, the author argues that not only did the continuous reinterpretation of the conspiracy serve religious and political purposes but that such literary reinterpretations produced generic changes.

Increasing interest is being shown in the intersections between literary and cultural history and in the material dimensions of the text. Evelyn B. Tribble argues that far from being extratextual, as many scholars have contended, marginal commentary and text fuse together to form the page's inscribed identity. By tracing the connections between marginal apparatus, authority, and authorship, she demonstrates that changes in book production had profound consequences for the changing relations among readers, writers, and cultural authority in the early modern period. Margins and Marginality is, to date, the only book-length study of the marginal apparatus of Renaissance books.

The original essays in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge scholars working in the field aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of emphasizing settled consensus they direct their readers to areas of enlivened and unresolved debate.
The deepest periodic division in English literary history has been between the Medieval and the Early Modern, not least because the cultural investments in maintaining that division are exceptionally powerful. Narratives of national and religious identity and freedom; of individual liberties; of the history of education and scholarship; of reading or the history of the book; of the very possibility of persuasive historical consciousness itself: each of these narratives (and more) is motivated by positing a powerful break around 1500.
None of the claims for a profound historical and cultural break at the turn of the fifteenth into the sixteenth centuries is negligible. The very habit of working within those periodic bounds (either Medieval or Early Modern) tends, however, simultaneously to affirm and to ignore the rupture. It affirms the rupture by staying within standard periodic bounds, but it ignores it by never examining the rupture itself. The moment of profound change is either, for medievalists, just over an unexplored horizon; or, for Early Modernists, a zero point behind which more penetrating examination is unnecessary. That situation is now rapidly changing. Scholars are building bridges that link previously insular areas. Both periods are starting to look different in dialogue with each other.
The change underway has yet to find collected voices behind it. Cultural Reformations volume aims to provide those voices. It will give focus, authority, and drive to a new area.

This book examines the interactions between social assumptions about womanhood and women's actual voices represented in plays and writings by authors of both genders in Jacobean England, placing the special emphasis on Lady Mary Wroth.

The Restoration was a period surprisingly rich in fiction, and the period between 1660 and 1700 witnessed the decline of the epic and the birth of the English novel. Literature of the period became increasingly secular in response to advancements in science, philosophy, and exploration. With growing recognition of the power of print, literary works became increasingly targeted to the masses, rather than just to the educated members of the upper class. John Bunyan's classic tale of salvation, ^IThe Pilgrim's Progress^R, became one of the most widely read works of the last few centuries and has been translated into scores of languages around the world. In recent years, the writings of Aphra Behn have elicited a growing critical response and have led scholars to reassess the place of women in early modern England. But with the exception of Bunyan and Behn, the English novel written between 1660 and 1700 remains a comparatively neglected area. Nonetheless, many other authors produced works of fiction in genres such as the criminal biography, the Utopian novel, the scientific voyage to another world, and the heroic romance. This reference book establishes a list of novels that appeared between 1660 and 1700 and provides a comprehensive annotated bibliography of critical and scholarly studies. The first part of the book presents overviews of existing bibliographies, anthologies, and general contextual works on the early English novel. The second part of the book includes alphabetically arranged sections for individual authors of the period, listing editions and scholarly studies of particular works. A chronology lists the novels according to year of publication, and detailed indexes conclude the volume.

The four plays of Shakespeare's Henriad and the slightly later Hamlet brilliantly explore interconnections between political power and interior subjectivity as productions of the newly emerging constellation we call modernity. Hugh Grady argues that for Shakespeare subjectivity was a critical, negative mode of resistance to power - not, as many recent critics have asserted, its abettor.

Making an important new contribution to rapidly expanding fields of study surrounding the adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare, Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation is the first book to address the intersection of ethics, aesthetics, authority, and authenticity.

The plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries continue to inspire fresh interpretations in every genre and medium. Reinventing the Renaissance: Shakespeare and his Contemporaries in Adaptation and Performance offers new perspectives on the ways in which writers, critics, directors, artists, and other creative practitioners have used Renaissance drama to address current concerns and reach new audiences. As well as exploring the fortunes of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in more expected contexts, such as film and theatre, these essays examine the relationship between the plays and new social media, detective fiction, translation, ballet, and illustration. The collection also reconsiders the boundary which separates critical and creative responses to Shakespeare by including explorations of 'creativity' in Shakespeare's biographers, as well as a creative revisioning of Macbeth. Written by an international team of scholars, this accessible and innovative volume will provide a valuable resource for all readers and researchers interested in the creative reception of Renaissance English drama.

Fostering the "pursuit of happiness" was an avowed purpose of the American Revolution, but what was the phrase to mean in practice? How would the new society being created achieve what Enlightenment egalitarians called the "common good"? In this dual biography of Benjamin Franklin and his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache, Jeffery A. Smith examines the careers of two of the most prominent journalists to advocate what became known as Jeffersonian republicanism. Franklin used his writings to encourage the kind of conscientious and public-spirited behavior he thought necessary if the majority of people were to secure free and prosperous lives. He impressed these ideals on Bache as he supervised his education in three countries and established him as a printer-publisher in Philadelphia. In the 1790s, as Federalists and Republicans battled over the course the United States would take in national and international affairs, Franklin's carefully indoctrinated protege became Jefferson's confidant and most fierce journalistic supporter. Franklin and Bache were among those envisioning a nation where liberty, learning, and a more even distribution of wealth would inaugurate a new epoch in human history. Published on the 200th anniversary of Franklin's death, this careful study offers a much-needed illumination of early American aspirations for a democratic future.

Drawing on a long-standing tradition of fictional images, British writers of the Romantic period defined and constructed Italy as a land that naturally invites inscription and description. In their works, Italy is a cultural geography so heavily overwritten with discourse that it becomes the natural recipient of further fictional transformations. If critics have frequently attended to this figurative complex and its related Italophilia, what seems to have been left relatively unexplored is the fact that these representations were paralleled and sustained by intense scholarly activities. This volume specifically addresses Romantic-period scholarship about Italian literature, history, and culture under the interconnected rubrics of 'translating', 'reviewing', and 'rewriting'. The essays in this book consider this rich field of scholarly activity in order to redraw its contours and examine its connections with the fictional images of Italy and the general fascination with this land and its civilization that are a crucial component of British culture between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Originally published in 1973 and 1977 respectively, these two volumes, now available together for the first time examine the history of French drama. The first traces tragedy, from its origins in the sixteenth century through to the last years of Louis XVI's reign. The second covers comedy, from the Renaissance, extending beyond Louis XVI into the eighteenth century and right up to the eve of the Revolution. Accessible to the general reader they would also be particularly useful for students of French drama.

During the bitter debate about the French Revolution, many women writers in Britain argued that the state and national culture should be based on virtues and domains traditionally conceded to women. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827 combines an illuminating survey of women's writing in this period with detailed analyses of the critically neglected work of three important women writers: Helen Maria Williams, Mary Hays, and Elizabeth Hamilton.

The late D. F. McKenzie worked on this comprehensive edition of the works of the playwright, poet, librettist, and novelist William Congreve for more than twenty years, until his sudden death in 1999. This was a task he had taken over from Herbert Davis, to whom this edition is dedicated. During that time McKenzie uncovered new verse and letters, collated Congreve's texts, recorded their complicated textual history, constructed appendices that shed light on the dramatic context in which Congreve worked, and examined how his contemporaries received Congreve's work. More importantly, McKenzie has convincingly re-evaluated Congreve's works and life to transform our image of the man and his reputation.
McKenzie here follows the editorial practice suggested in two early editions of the Works published by Congreve's friend, the bookseller Jacob Tonson, in 1710 and 1719. These three volumes follow a plan similar to that in the Tonson edition, with The Old Batchelor, The Double-Dealer, and Love for Love collected in the first, a central volume with The Way of the World, and a final volume with Congreve's novel Incognita, some of his prose works, letters, and later verse. In each case, Congreve's work is left to speak for itself, unencumbered by intrusive notes, textual apparatus, or collations, which are gathered instead near the end of each volume.
This edition will be an invaluable resource for scholars for many years to come. It is a monument to McKenzie's own scholarship as well as to the integrity of William Congreve.

This volume is a comprehensive collection of articles on Bunyan as well as including several broader views of the Nonconformist tradition.

The Seventeenth-Century Literature Handbook is an accessible, authoritative and comprehensive introduction to English literature in the seventeenth century. It provides a one-stop resource for literature students, with the essential information and guidance needed at the beginning of a course through to the development of more advanced knowledge and skills. It includes: - introductions to authors, texts and contexts- guides to key critics, concepts and topics- an overview of major critical approaches, changes in the canon and directions of current and future research - case studies in reading literary and critical texts- an annotated bibliography (including websites), timeline, glossary of critical terms. Written in clear language by leading academics, it is an indispensable starting point for students beginning their study of seventeenth-century literature.>

Posthumanist Shakespeares is a critical investigation of the relationship between early modern culture and contemporary political and technological changes concerning the idea of the 'human.' The volume covers the tragedies King Lear and Hamlet in particular, but also provides posthumanist readings of The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, Timon of Athens and Pericles. The value of the collection lies in extending a posthumanist paradigm to interpretations of Shakespeare, and in demonstrating how posthumanism can be in turn read back by Shakespeare's work. What emerges from Posthumanist Shakespeares is that the encounter between posthumanism and Shakespeare studies, far from being unlikely, is productive for both fields and can lead to a critical rethinking of both, recasting questions concerning time, life, death, science, technology, and the nature of the human.

Seventeenth-century authors so thoroughly imbued the language and imagery of the Bible in vernacular translation that their texts are to be read as attempts to inscribe themselves within the realm of the sacred. This book analyzes how three seventeenth-century English authors fashion themselves as a specific biblical figure, and how they fashion themselves in their works in order to bring their spiritual lives in line with the narrative arch of a biblical type.

In September of 1701, events transpired in Naples that, through frequent retellings, became popularly known as "the conspiracy of the Prince of Macchia." Rapidly gaining fame, this apparently anonymous narrative was soon incorporated by different historians in their history of the transition years between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But who was the initial bard or narrator, the town clerk or citizen who first gave testimony of this event by creating a Latin text of the story of the Prince of Macchia? Giambattista Vico was not among the claimants to the authorship of the fabulous story that changed the future of the Kingdom of Naples. Nevertheless, four scholars across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were themselves convinced, and managed to convince the intellectual world as well, that Vico, then a young teacher of rhetoric at the University of Naples, was indeed the source of this original Latin narration of this oft retold Neapolitan history. This book provides the original Latin text with a parallel translation, as well as historical context and analysis of both the text's authorship history and the account itself.