Through an examination of her complete works and public response to them, Robertson gauges the extent of Inchbald's reputation as the dignified Mrs Inchbald, as well as providing a clear sense of what it meant to be a female Romantic writer.

Macleod examines changing British conceptions of America across the political spectrum during a period of political, cultural and intellectual upheaval. Macleod incorporates British writers of conservative, liberal and radical views.

Belle dame sans merci (Beautiful lady with no mercy) (1424) is not readily available in moden English translation elsewhere, making this an essential addition to any library with a medieval literature or French literature collection.

A study of the production, circulation and consumption of English ghost stories during the Age of Reason. This work examines a variety of mediums: ballads and chapbooks, newspapers, sermons, medical treatises and scientific journals, novels and plays. It relates the telling of ghost stories to changes associated with the Enlightenment.

Hannah Cowley (1743-1809) was a very successful dramatist, and something of an eighteenth-century celebrity. New critical interest in the drama of this period has meant a resurgence of interest in Cowley's writing and in the performance of her plays. This is the first substantial monograph study to examine Cowley's life and work.

Gonthier sets Montesquieu's work in the context of early eighteenth-century Anglo-French relations, taking a comparative approach to show how Montesquieu's engagement with English thought and writing persisted throughout his writing career.

During the eighteenth century, treatises on the science of elocution, gesture and naturalness abounded. This title draws together a representative selection of the most difficult-to-access texts in the period. It helps cultural historians to examine the place of stagecraft in the eighteenth-century imagination.

This is the first complete study of China's most popular eighteenth-century poet in any Western language. The work consists of a detailed biography, a study of Yuan's revolutionary reinterpretation of Chinese literary theory, and an analysis of his many contributions to the more original genres of Qing-dynasty (1644-1911) poetry such as narrative, historical, didactic, eccentric, and nature verse. The study is concluded by a generous and representative sampling of Yuan's poetry in translation, the first to do justice to the wide variety and richness of his oeuvre. Although many shorter poems are selected, this is the first translation to include his outstanding longer poetry. Harmony Garden will completely revise current attitudes in the west concerning classical Chines literature during the eighteenth century, a period that was long viewed as one of decline, but now appears to equal the golden ages of antiquity.

Focusing on eighteenth-century cultural productions, Wendy Sutherland examines how representations of race in philosophy, anthropology, aesthetics, drama, and court painting influenced the construction of a white bourgeois German self. Sutherland positions her work within the framework of the transatlantic slave trade, showing that slavery, colonialism, and the triangular trade between Europe, West Africa, and the Caribbean function as the global stage on which German bourgeois dramas by Friedrich Wilhelm Ziegler, Ernst Lorenz Rathlef, and Theodor Koerner (and a novella by Heinrich von Kleist on which Koerner's play was based) were performed against a backdrop of philosophical and anthropological influences. Plays had an important role in educating the rising bourgeois class in morality, Sutherland argues, with fathers and daughters offered as exemplary moral figures in contrast to the depraved aristocracy. At the same time, black female protagonists in nontraditional dramas represent the boundaries of physical beauty and marriage eligibility while also complicating ideas of moral beauty embodied in the concept of the beautiful soul. Her book offers convincing evidence that the eighteenth-century German stage grappled with the representation of blackness during the Age of Goethe, even though the German states were neither colonial powers nor direct participants in the slave trade.

"But in a fiction, in a dream of passion..." In an extended commentary on this passage this book offers a rationale for the excellence and primacy of this play among the tragedies. Throughout, emphasis is placed on Hamlet's fantasies and imaginations rather than on ethical criteria, and on the depiction of Hamlet as a revenge play through an exploration of its dark and mysterious aspects. The book stresses the importance of Passion and Its Fictions in the play and attempts to explore the very Pirandellian topic of Hamlet's passion and dream of passion. It goes on to examine the organization of dramatic energies in the play - the use Shakespeare makes of analogy and infinite regress and of scene rows, broken scenes and impacted scenes, and the significance of the exact middle of Hamlet. The final section is devoted to conventions of style, imagery, and genre in the play - what is the stage situation of asides, soliloguies, and offstage speech? How is the imagery of skin disease and sealing distinctive? In what sense is Hamlet a comedy, or does it use comedy significantly?

First published in 1989, this title explores the relationship theater and power in the English Renaissance. Shakespeare's Henry V, Richard II, and Macbeth are examined alongside a range of cultural materials, including philosophical and historical accounts of sovereignty, royal portraiture and representations of treason and punishment. Renaissance theater was far more than a vehicle for the expression of a political content: it played a constitutive role in forming the distinctive theory of sovereignty and the distinctive political subjectivity of the era. By reading Shakespeare's plays conjunction with other, ideologically charged forms of representation, the book continues new-historicist efforts to uncover the complex relations between literary texts and cultural contexts. Providing an interesting and detailed analysis, this reissue will be of value to students of Shakespeare and the English Renaissance, and those concerned with exploring the intersection between cultural analysis, post-structuralism, and psychoanalytic interpretation.

Over the past three decades scholars have transformed the study of women and gender in early modern Europe. This Ashgate Research Companion presents an authoritative review of the current research on women and gender in early modern Europe from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The authors examine women's lives, ideologies of gender, and the differences between ideology and reality through the recent research across many disciplines, including history, literary studies, art history, musicology, history of science and medicine, and religious studies. The book is intended as a resource for scholars and students of Europe in the early modern period, for those who are just beginning to explore these issues and this time period, as well as for scholars learning about aspects of the field in which they are not yet an expert. The companion offers not only a comprehensive examination of the current research on women in early modern Europe, but will act as a spark for new research in the field.

Brings a fresh and contemporary approach to study of classic texts and plays so will appeal to students Easy to adapt to courses as looks at canonical plays which are frequently studied (Hamlet, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice) Written in a personal and accessible style so easy for readers of all levels to understand The author has a high media profile and is well-known and well-connected in the area, as well as being an award-winning academic

This volume combines two classic works on Hamlet, first published in 1919 and 1922. The first book's original description says that it contains a theory which attempts to explain an everlasting problem - it insists that Hamlet is neither a failure not an accident, but a very great work of art. In a final chapter, the play is examined as an aesthetic document. It is a profoundly interesting and not unprovocative work. The second book reviews and attempts to resolve the most interesting debate of any Shakespeare play and presents proper method for investigating the genesis of the plays in this way.

Margaret Cavendish (1623 - 1673) was a philosopher, poet, scientist, novelist, and playwright of the seventeenth century. Her work is important for a number of reasons. It presents an early and compelling version of the naturalism that is found in current-day philosophy; it offers important insights that bear on recent discussions of the nature and characteristics of intelligence and the question of whether or not the bodies that surround us are intelligent or have an intelligent cause; it anticipates some of the central views and arguments that are more commonly associated with figures like Thomas Hobbes and David Hume. This is the first full account of Cavendish's philosophy and covers the whole span of her work. David Cunning begins with an overview of Cavendish's life and work before assessing her contribution to a wide range of philosophical subjects, including her arguments concerning materialism, experimentation, the existence of God, social and political philosophy and free will and compatibilism. Setting Cavendish in both historical and philosophical context, he argues that like Spinoza she builds on central tenets of Descartes' philosophy and develops them in a direction that Descartes himself would avoid. She defends a plenum metaphysics according to which all individuals are causally interdependent, and according to which the physical universe is a larger individual that constitutes all of reality. Cavendish is essential reading for students of seventeenth-century philosophy, early modern philosophy and seventeenth-century literature.

First published in 1986, this title critiques the canonical view of Milton as an isolated Great Man, and reassesses the impact of the Puritan Revolution on two of his major works: the Areopagitica and Paradise Lost. The study focuses on the emergence of a discreet ethical framework of thought within the dominant theological code of these two works, arguing that this framework - integral to Protestantism - is also crucial to the construction of subjectivity under capitalism. Through an analysis of the rhetorical strategies of the Areopagitica and the generic composition of Paradise Lost, Christopher Kendrick demonstrates that Milton's 'individualism' both affirms the success of the Puritan Revolution and also exposes the contradictions between the capitalist subject's ethical freedom and the world of necessity of which that freedom is part.

This is the first title in a new series called Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution. This series will appeal to those involved in English literary studies, as well as those working in fields of study that cover Enlightenment, Romanticism and Revolution in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

The essays in this edited collection look at the role of poetry in the development of Enlightenment ideas. As scholarly disciplines began to emerge - anthropology, linguistics, psychology - the ancient art of poetry was invoked to create new ways of defining and expanding this philosophy of human science.

Charlotte Smith's early sonnets established the genre as a Romantic form; her novels advanced sensibility beyond its reliance on emotional facility; and her blank verse initiated one of the most familiar of Romantic verse forms. This volume draws together the best of current scholarship.

Elizabethan and early Stuart England saw the prevailing medium for transmitting military news shift from public ritual, through private letters, to public newspapers. This study is based on an examination of hundreds of manuscript news letters, printed pamphlets and corantos, and news diaries which are in holdings in the US and the UK.

A comprehensive collection of the best writing about this Shakespearian play, both as dramatic literature and theatrical performance, this book is an excellent resource companion to the text. This collected wisdom was originally published in 1986. It contains pieces of commentary from as far back as the late 18th Century but also highly acclaimed critical pieces from more recent years, organised into six general themes.

Of all the new developments in literary theory, feminism has proved to be the most widely influential, leading to an expansion of the traditional English canon in all periods of study. This book aims to make the work of Renaissance women writers in English better known to general and academic readers so as to strengthen the case for their future inclusion in the Renaissance literary canon. This lively book surveys women writers in the sixteenth century and early seventeenth centuries. Its selection is vast, historically representative, and original, taking examples from twenty different, relatively unknown authors in all genres of writing, including poetry, fiction, religious works, letters and journals, translation, and books on childcare. It establishes new contexts for the debate about women as writers within the period and suggests potential intertextual connections with works by well-known male authors of the same time. Individual authors and works are given concise introductions, with both modern and historical critical analysis, setting them in a theoretical and historicised context. All texts are made readily accessible through modern spelling and punctuation, on-the-page annotation and headnotes. The substantial, up-to-date bibliography provides a source for further study and research.

Though recent scholarship has focused both on motherhood and on romance literature in early modern England, until now, no full length volume has addressed the notable intersections between the two topics. This collection contributes to the scholarly investigation of maternity in early modern England by scrutinizing romance narratives in various forms, considering motherhood not as it was actually lived, but as it was figured in the fantasy world of romance by authors ranging from Edmund Spenser to Margaret Cavendish. Contributors explore the traditional association between romance and women, both as readers of fiction and as tellers of 'old wives' tales,' as well as the tendency of romance plots, with their emphasis on the family and its reproduction, to foreground matters of maternity. Collectively, the essays in this volume invite reflection on the uses to which Renaissance culture put maternal stereotypes (the virgin mother, the cruel step-dame), as well as the powerful fears and desires that mothers evoke, assuage and sometimes express in the fantasy world of romance.

Since the 1970s, romance novels have surpassed all other genres in terms of popularity in the United States, accounting for half of all mass market paperbacks sold and driving the digital publishing revolution. Romance Fiction and American Culture brings together scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and publishing to explore American romance fiction from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century. Essays on interracial, inspirational, and LGBTQ romance attend to the diversity of the genre, while new areas of inquiry are suggested in contextual and interdisciplinary examinations of romance authorship, readership, and publishing history, of pleasure and respectability in African American romance fiction, and of the dynamic tension between the genre and second wave feminism. As it situates romance fiction among other instances of American love culture, from Civil War diaries to Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Romance Fiction and American Culture confirms the complexity and enduring importance of this most contested of genres.

This book establishes new information about the likely content of ten lost plays from the period 1580-1642. These plays' authors include Nashe, Heywood, and Dekker; and the plays themselves connect in direct ways to some of the most canonical dramas of English literature, including Hamlet, King Lear, The Changeling, and The Duchess of Malfi. The lost plays in question are: Terminus & Non Terminus (1586-8); Richard the Confessor (1593); Cutlack (1594); Bellendon (1594); Truth's Supplication to Candlelight (1600); Albere Galles (1602); Henry the Una (c. 1619); The Angel King (1624); The Duchess of Fernandina (c. 1630-42); and The Cardinal's Conspiracy (bef. 1639). From this list of bare titles, it is argued, can be reconstructed comedies, tragedies, and histories, whose leading characters included a saint, a robber, a Medici duchess, an impotent king, at least one pope, and an angel. In each case, newly-available digital research resources make it possible to interrogate the title and to identify the play's subject-matter, analogues, and likely genre. But these concrete examples raise wider theoretical problems: What is a lost play? What can, and cannot, be said about objects in this problematic category? Known lost plays from the early modern commercial theatre outnumber extant plays from that theatre: but how, in practice, can one investigate them? This book offers an innovative theoretical and practical frame for such work, putting digital humanities into action in the emerging field of lost play studies.