As cultural practice, the early modern duel both indicated and shaped the gender assumptions of wealthy young men; it served, in fact, as a nexus for different, often competing, notions of masculinity. As Jennifer Low illustrates by examining the aggression inherent in single combat, masculinity could be understood in spatial terms, social terms, or developmental terms. Low considers each category, developing a corrective to recent analyses of gender in early modern culture by scrutinizing the relationship between social rank and the understanding of masculinity. Reading a variety of documents, including fencing manuals and anti-dueling tracts as well as plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and other dramatists, she demonstrates the interaction between the duel as practice, as stage-device, and as locus of early modern cultural debate.

This book shows that the sounds of the early modern stage do not only signify but are also significant. Sounds are weighted with meaning, offering a complex system of allusions. Playwrights such as Jonson and Shakespeare developed increasingly experimental soundscapes, from the storms of King Lear (1605) and Pericles (1607) to the explosive laboratory of The Alchemist (1610). Yet, sound is dependent on the subjectivity of listeners; this book is conscious of the complex relationship between sound as made and sound as heard. Sound effects should not resound from scene to scene without examination, any more than a pun can be reshaped in dialogue without acknowledgement of its shifting connotations. This book listens to sound as a rhetorical device, able to penetrate the ears and persuade the mind, to influence and to affect. -- .

Why are there so few 'happily ever afters' in the Romantic-period verse romance? Why do so many poets utilise the romance and its parts to such devastating effect? Why is gender so often the first victim? The Romantic Paradox investigates the prevalence of death in the poetic romances of the Della Cruscans, Coleridge, Keats, Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon, and Byron, and posits that understanding the romance and its violent tendencies is vital to understanding Romanticism itself.

The Making of the Modern Child explores how the concept of childhood in the Victorian era was constructed through the ideological work performed by children's literature, as well as pedagogical writing and medical literature of the era. The author ties the evolution of the idea of 'the child' to the growth of the middle class, which used the figure of 'the child' as a symbol in its various calls for social reform.

This innovative collection brings together a group of leading theatre historians to identify and exemplify a variety of productive new approaches to the investigation of plays, players, playwrights, playhouses and other aspects of theatre in the long eighteenth century. Their inquiries are multi-faceted, ranging from stage censorship and anti-theatricalism to the investigation of playhouse finances, from the performance representation of Othello and Oroonoko to the political resonances of adultery comedy, and from Garrick's vocal art to the interpretation of contemporary paintings of actors and actresses.

Mind, Body, Motion, Matter investigates the relationship between the eighteenth century's two predominant approaches to the natural world - mechanistic materialism and vitalism - in the works of leading British and French writers such as Daniel Defoe, William Hogarth, Laurence Sterne, the third Earl of Shaftesbury and Denis Diderot. Focusing on embodied experience and the materialization of thought in poetry, novels, art, and religion, the literary scholars in this collection offer new and intriguing readings of these canonical authors. Informed by contemporary currents such as new materialism, cognitive studies, media theory, and post-secularism, their essays demonstrate the volatility of the core ideas opened up by materialism and the possibilities of an aesthetic vitalism of form.

A Year of Shakespeare gives a uniquely expert and exciting overview of the largest Shakespeare celebration the world has ever known: the World Shakespeare Festival 2012. This is the only book to describe and analyse each of the Festival's 73 productions in well-informed,lively reviews by eminent and up-and-coming scholars and critics from the UK and around the world. A rich resource of critical interest to all students, scholars and lovers of Shakespeare, the book also captures the excitement of this extraordinary event. A Year of Shakespeare provides: * a ground-breaking collection of Shakespearean reviews, covering all of the Festival's productions; * a dynamic visual record through a wide range of production photographs; * incisive analysis of the Festival's significance in the wider context of the Cultural Olympiad 2012. All the world really is a stage, and it's time for curtain-up...

The appearance in 1609 of Shakespeare's Sonnets is cloaked in mystery and controversy, while the poems themselves are masterpieces of silence and deception. The intervening four centuries have done little to diminish either their mystique or their appeal, and recent years have witnessed an upsurge in interest in these brilliant and contentious lyrics. John Blades' penetrating study of the Sonnets is a highly lucid introduction to Shakespeare's subjects and poetic craft, involving detailed insights on the major themes, together with a comprehensive exploration of the Rival Poet and Dark Mistress sequences. Shakespeare: The Sonnets: - draws on an extensive range of sonnets, offering a line-by-line analysis that engages with the poems as masterworks in their own right, as well as registering their relationship with Shakespeare's dramas - locates the Sonnets in their Elizabethan and humanist framework, with a survey of the history of the sonnet form and rhetorical conventions within the context of the early modern period - concludes with a brief assessment of critical attitudes towards the Sonnets over the four centuries since their publication and an indepth examination of four important critics. Providing students with the critical and analytical skills with which to approach the Sonnets, and featuring a helpful glossary and suggestions for further study, this fascinating book is an indispensable guide.

Contents:
THE EARLY YEARS

Barker, Arthur. 'Milton's Schoolmasters.' Modern Language Review 32 (1937).

Miller, Leo. 'Milton's Clash with Chappell: A Suggested Reconstruction.' Milton Quarterly 14 (1980).

Hale, John K. 'Milton Plays the Fool: The Christ's College Salting 1628.' Classical and Modern Literature 20 (2000).

Rumrich, John. 'The Erotic Milton.' Texas Studies in Language and Literature 41 (1999).

Hill, John Spencer. 'Poet-Priest: Vocational Tension in Milton's Early Development.' Milton Studies 8 (1975).

Hanford, James Holly. 'Milton in Italy.' Annuale Mediaevale 5 (1964).

Friedman, Donald. 'Galileo and the Art of Seeing.' In Milton in Italy: Contexts, Images, Contradiction, edited by Mario A. Di Cesare (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991).

THE MATURE YEARS

Miller, Leo. 'John Milton's 'Lost' Sonnet to Mary Powell.' Milton Quarterly 25 (1990).

Sirluck, Ernest. 'Milton's Idle Right Hand.' Journal of English and German Philology 60 (1961).

Corns, Thomas. 'Milton's Quest for Respectability.' Modern Language Research 77 (1982).

Woolrych, Austin. 'Milton and Cromwell: 'A Short but Scandalous Night of Interruption'.' In Achievements of the Left Hand, edited by Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974).

Hughes, Merritt Y. 'Milton as a Revolutionary.' English Literary History 10 (1943).

Hunter, William B. 'Some Speculations on the Nature of Milton's Blindness.' Journal of the History of Medicine 17 (1962).

Baruch, Franklin R. 'Milton's Blindness: The Conscious and Unconscious Patterns of Autobiography.' English Literary History 42 (1975).

Davies, Godfrey. 'Milton in 1660.' Huntington Library Quarterly 18 (1955).

Kermode, Frank. 'Milton in Old Age.' Southern Review 11 (1975).

MILTON'S LITERARY AFTERLIFE

Frank, Marcia. 'Staging Criticism, Staging Milton: John Dryden's The State of Innocence.' The Eighteenth Century 34 (1993).

Bostich, June. 'Miltonic Influence in 'The Rape of the Lock'.' Enlightenment Essays 4 (1973).

Wittreich, Joseph A. 'The Illustrious Dead: Milton's Legacy and Romantic Prophecy.' Milton and the Romantics 4 (1980).

Grundy, Joan. 'Hardy and Milton.' Thomas Hardy Annual 3 (1985).

Jenkins, Hugh. 'Jefferson (Re)Reading Milton.' Milton Quarterly 32 (1998).

Herron, Carolivia. 'Milton and Afro-American Literature.' In Re-Membering Milton, edited by Mary Nyquist and Margaret Ferguson (New York: Methuen, 1987).

Drawing on the extraordinary wealth of scholarly and critical material on John Milton's life, works and influence, this collection of reprinted articles brings together the most illuminating scholarship that has been written about Milton in the last hundred years.
Volume three deals with the great polemical tracts that Milton composed during the Puritan Commonwealth on the liberty of the church, the liberty of the state, the liberty of the press and the liberty of the individual.
Each volume contains articles exemplifying a wide range of critical approaches and scholarly methods offering the reader not only a broad introduction to one of England's greatest poets but also a vade mecum to the incredible diversity of literary critical activity that has characterized the field of Milton studies over the past century.

Drawing on the extraordinary wealth of scholarly and critical material on John Milton's life, works and influence, this collection of reprinted articles brings together the most illuminating scholarship that has been written about Milton in the last hundred years.
Volume five addresses some of the crucial issues in Milton's last two poems, published together in 1671.
Each volume contains articles exemplifying a wide range of critical approaches and scholarly methods offering the reader not only a broad introduction to one of England's greatest poets but also a vade mecum to the incredible diversity of literary critical activity that has characterized the field of Milton studies over the past century.

There are many 'Shakespeares', argue the contributors to this, the second volume of Alternative Shakespeares and the different versions emerge in a wide variety of cultural contexts: race, gender, sexuality and politics amongst others. Alternative Shakespeares: Volume 2 consists of entirely new essays by some of the world's leading Shakespearean critics. The topics covered include: Sexuality and Gender, Language and Power, Textualilty and Printing, Race and Shakespeare's Britain, New Historicist Criticism and the 'Gaze' of the Audience. In abandoning the search for any final and definitive 'meaning' in any of Shakepeare's plays, the contributors to Alternative Shakespeares: Volume 2 present an exciting and ultimately liberating challeneg to Shakespeare studies.

British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility argues that participants in the late eighteenth-century slavery debate developed a distinct sentimental rhetoric, using the language of the heart to powerful effect in the most important political and humanitarian battle of the time. Examining both familiar and unfamiliar texts, including poetry, novels, journalism, and political writing, Carey shows that salve-owners and abolitionists alike made strategic use of the rhetoric of sensibility in the hope of influencing a reading public thoroughly immersed in the 'cult of feeling'.

In this first study of the role of scepticism in literature, Fred Parker offers a lively and stimulating introduction to key issues in eighteenth-century literature and philosophy. Parker traces the presence of sceptical thinking in works by Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson, relates it more broadly to the social self-consciousness of eighteenth-century culture, and discusses its source in Locke and its inspiration in Montaigne.

Product Note:
Volume 4 of the 5 volume facsimile collection Key Writings on Subcultures, 1535-1727: Classics from the Underworld [0-415-28675-1]

When it first appeared, The English Rogue was declared a forbidden book on account of its gross indecency. Copies were printed secretly and sold furtively at alehouses until 1665 when it was properly licensed. When requested, the author, Richard Head, declined to produce a second volume as it was his belief that the text had been interpreted as autobiographical and his reputation had suffered as a consequence. Francis Kirkman, who had acquired the rights to the work, set about the endeavour himself and wrote the remaining volumes, publishing them in 1671.
This is a reprint of the 1928 reissue containing Head's original book and two of Kirkman's added volumes.

Product Note:
Volume 1 of the 5 volume facsimile collection Key Writings on Subcultures, 1535-1727: Classics from the Underworld [0-415-28675-1]

Series Information:
Routledge Literary Sourcebooks

This volume brings together new essays on the relations between fiction and the economy by eleven academics, all established or emergent scholars from different fields of expertise. The essays range widely in their respective foci, extending beyond purely literary studies to encompass history, the history of language, studies in the visual arts, and philosophy. Including essays from leading (and in some cases multilingual) academics in Europe as well as the UK, Fiction and Economy is genuinely international, distinctive, and broad in its scope.

The Critical Heritage series collects together criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a particular writer, showing students the formation of critical attitudes to the writer's work and its place within a literary tradition. Selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included to demonstrate posthumous fluctuations in the writer's reputation.
This new volume includes criticism the work of William Wordsworth between 1793 and 1820. Over 250 diary extracts, letters, reviews, comments, and opinions by and about Wordsworth are gathered together here for the first time. This is an invaluable addition to any literary library.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203169026

During the 19 years of her play-writing career, Aphra Behn had far more new plays staged than anyone else. This book is the first to examine all her theatrical work. It explains her often dominant place in the complex theatrical culture of Charles II's reign, her divided political sympathies, and her interests as a free-thinking intellectual. It also reveals her to be a brilliant theatrical practitioner who used the seen as richly and significantly as the spoken.

Shakespeare Survey is a yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production. Since 1948, Survey has published the best international scholarship in English and many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism. Each volume is devoted to a theme, or play, or group of plays; each also contains a section of reviews of that year's textual and critical studies and of the year's major British performances. The theme for Volume 74 is 'Shakespeare and Education. The complete set of Survey volumes is also available online at https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/collections/shakespeare-survey This fully searchable resource enables users to browse by author, essay and volume, search by play, theme and topic and save and bookmark their results.

Representing what someone else has said is an integral part of spoken and written communication. Speech representation occurs in many contexts from news reports and legal trials to everyday conversation. Although commonplace, it requires sophisticated choices regarding what to represent and how to represent it. These choices can highlight a speaker's voice, shape our perception of the reported speech, or support our claims of authority.While speech representation in Present-day English has been studied extensively, this book extends the discussion to historical periods. Speech Representation in the History of English explores speech representation of the past, providing in-depth analyses of how speakers and writers mark, structure, and discuss a previous speech event or fictional speech. Focusing on the Early Modern English and the Late Modern English periods (1500-1900), this volume covers topics such as parentheses as markers of represented speech, the development of like as a reporting expression, the gradual formation of free indirect speech reporting, and the interpersonal functions of represented speech. Chapters draw on a wide range of methodologies, including historical sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and corpus linguistics, and cover many genres from witness depositions, literary texts, and letters, to the spoken language of the recent past. In this comprehensive volume, Peter Grund and Terry Walker bring together a collection of works that use cutting-edge approaches to speech representation. Researchers and students of the history of English, sociolinguistics, and discourse studies alike will find Speech Representation in the History of English to be an invaluable addition to the field.

This six-volume anthology documents the history of women's drama throughout the 18th century, starting with the emergence in 1695-6 of the second generation of women dramatists in succession to Aphra Benn. Containing a representative selection of newly edited and annotated texts by leading woman dramatists of the period from 1696 to 1800, the anthology reflects the changes in Britain's global realignment in class models and perception of other peoples.

Vitalism is usually associated with Romantic theories of nature, but the supposition of a 'vital principle' or life-force recurred throughout eighteenth-century natural philosophy, to counter the inadequacy of mechanism to understand the operation of natural life. This book traces the persistent presence of a language of vital nature not only in eighteenth-century science, but in literary and philosophical writing too: in moral philosophy, theories of sensibility and political economy, and in the radical journalism and women's writing of the 1790s. It explores the influence of the Scottish vitalist physiology of Robert Whytt and others on writers and thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith, David Hume, Erasmus Darwin, John Hunter, John Thelwall and Mary Wollstonecraft. In doing so, it shows the centrality of vitalism to eighteenth-century accounts of the body, nature, matter and life, and offers a new way of understanding the relationship between eighteenth-century science and culture and that of the Romantic period.