"The heavens are full of gods, to whom we give the names of stars." - Aristotle Decoding the Night is a scholarly exploration of the astronomical basis of Greek myth and religion. Ancient Greeks relied on the steady movements of the stars for an accurate calendar and for navigation at sea or in other unmarked territory. What may have started as a practical, graphic tool for identifying the stars developed into an oral tradition of stories that have become Greek myth. The astronomical information became sacred not only for its practical value, but also because it represented an unchanging and perfect universe untouched by the vicissitudes of life on earth. Seeded by the original idea that "immortal" gods refers to circumpolar stars, who reside at the "highest seat of heaven," or North Celestial Pole, a map of the night sky has emerged from works by ancient authors, which places Greek myth in a logical and concrete context. The North Celestial Pole, as the pivot point of all stellar movement, was considered the most sacred and immutable part of the heavens. Mount Olympus to the Greeks, was the home of the "immortal gods," because those stars were always visible in the night sky. "Dying and resurrected" gods were found at lower latitudes, where their annual disappearance below the horizon, was considered a death and entrance into the Underworld. Resurrection occurred at the helical rising of that star/god months or days later. The "death and resurrection" of rise and set stars were the foundation of the Greek religious calendar and ceremonies. The Greeks and other ancient cultures aimed not simply to appease their gods, but used ceremony to mimic the heavens and bring the divine order above down to earth. Decoding the Night leads the reader through the astronomical, geographical, and cultural framework of ancient Greece, which lends new meaning to many facets of myth. The primary constellations are discussed as representatives of well-known gods and goddesses, with the connections and similarities richly illustrated in myth, sculpture, and other art.

This new study of one of Britain's greatest modern playwrights represents the first major, extended discussion of Edward Bond's work in over twenty years. The book combines rigorous and stimulating analysis and discussion of Bond's plays and ideas about drama and society. For the first time, there is also discussion of selected plays from his later, post-2000 period, including Innocence and Have I None, alongside explorations of widely studied plays such as Saved.

This book brings a variety of voices into conversation about the issues of identity, community, tension and violence, and peace in the West: from Sophocles to Alice Walker, from Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. and from Euripides to Edward Said.

In this unique study, Michael Y. Bennett re-reads four influential modern plays alongside their contemporary debates between rationalism and empiricism to show how these monumental achievements were thoroughly a product of their time, but also universal in their epistemological quest to understand the world through a rational and/or empirical model. Bennett contends that these plays directly engage in their contemporary epistemological debates rather than through the lens of a specific philosophy. Besides producing new, insightful readings of heavily-studied plays, the interdisciplinary (historical, philosophical, dramatic, theatrical, and literary) frame Bennett constructs allows him to investigate one of the most fundamental questions of the theatre - how does meaning get made? Bennett suggests that the key to unlocking theatrical meaning is exploring the tension between empirical and rational modes of understanding. The book concludes with an interview with performance artist Coco Fusco.

Becoming the Gentleman explains why British citizens in the long eighteenth century were haunted by the question of what it meant to be a gentleman. Supplementing recent work on femininity, Solinger identifies a corpus of texts that address masculinity and challenges the notion of a masculine figure that has been regarded as unchanging.

This book offers a comprehensive political biography of Kingsley Ozuomba Mbadiwe, (1915-1990), a central figure in Nigerian political history for more than forty years. Starting in 1936 as a protege of Nnamdi Azikiwe, then Nigeria's most renowned nationalist, Mbadiwe himself by the 1950s became a frontline nationalist. And next to Tafawa Balewa from the North who became Prime Minster in 1957, he was the most important figure in the Nigerian Federal Government between 1952 and Nigeria's first military coup in 1966. During this time he held a succession of important Cabinet positions and was Parliamentary Leader of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), which was in a ruling alliance with the Northern People's Congress (NPC). In contrast, his older prominent political contemporaries, Azikiwe of the Eastern Region, Igbo Leader of the NCNC; Obafemi Awolowo of the Western Region, Yoruba Leader of the Action Group (AG); and Ahmadu Bello of the Northern Region, Fulani Leader of the NPC, all carved out their political careers totally or largely at the regional level. Throughout his political career Mbadiwe's focus was always at the national level. Truly, it has been stated that Mbadiwe was one of the founding fathers of the Nigerian State. Nonetheless, Mbadiwe's ambition for himself to lead Nigeria and for his nation to set it on the path to greatness faced insuperable difficulties. In a country of widespread poverty, high illiteracy, and a grossly underdeveloped private sector, there were fierce ethnic and regional conflicts for the control of governments and resources, leading to massive corruption and serious instability. This in turn led to prolonged military rule twenty years in Mbadiwe's lifetime which was often more corrupt and repressive than civilian rule, and was bitterly deprecated by Mbadiwe.

The Baader-Meinhof Group and other violent underground organizations have provided material to many novels by leading German and international writers. This book is the first to examine this rich literary corpus, treating it as a political unconscious which expresses submerged anxieties and moral blind-spots in Europe's most powerful country.

Mighty Lewd Books describes the emergence of a new home-grown English pornography. Through the examination of over 500 pieces of British erotica, this book looks at sex as seen in erotic culture, religion and medicine throughout the long eighteenth-century, and provides a radical new approach to the study of sexuality.

By reading key Carter texts alongside their Decadent intertexts, Tonkin interrogates the claim that Carter was in thrall to a fetishistic aesthetic antithetical to her feminism. Through historical contextualization of the woman-as-doll, muse and femme fatale, Tonkin tests Carter's own description of her fiction as a form of literary criticism.

Novels by significant Modernist authors can be described as romans a clef , providing insight into restrictions governing the representation of female homosexuality in the early twentieth century. Nair argues that key novels of the period represented same-sex desire through the encryption of personal references directed towards coterie audiences.

From The Other Boleyn Girl to Fingersmith , this collection explores the popularity of female-centred historical novels in recent years. It asks how these representations are influenced by contemporary gender politics, and whether they can be seen as part of a wider feminist project to recover women's history.

This interdisciplinary anthology highlights exiled/alienated women in literature, history, and cinema. Contributors investigate when and how women from diverse backgrounds have been relegated to the margins in order to shed light on the state of alienhood that stems from gendered otherness.

Looking at representations of the Irish landscape in contemporary literature and the arts, this volume discusses the economic, political and environmental issues associated with it, questioning the myths behind Ireland's landscape, from the first Greek descriptions to present day post Celtic-Tiger architecture.

A major academic controversy has raged in recent years over the analysis of the political and religious commitments of Samuel Johnson, the most commanding of the 'commanding heights' of eighteenth-century English letters. This book, one of a trilogy from Palgrave, brings that debate to a decisive conclusion, retrieving the 'historic Johnson.'

Film and television adaptations of classic literature have held a longstanding appeal for audiences, an appeal that this book sets out to examine. With a particular focus on Wuthering Heights , the book examines adaptations made from the 1930s to the twenty-first century, providing an understanding of how they help shape our cultural landscape.

In studying performances of marriage in modern and contemporary British and American drama, Clum highlights the fact that - paradoxically - at a time when theatre was both popular entertainment and high culture, many of the most commercially and artistically successful plays about marriage were written by homosexual men. Beginning with Oscar Wilde and focusing on some of the most successful British and American playwrights of the past century, including Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Terence Rattigan, and Emlyn Williams in England and Clyde Fitch, George Kelly, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Edward Albee in the US, The Drama of Marriagelooks at how the plays they wrote about heterosexual marriage continue to impact contemporary gay playwrights and the depiction of marriage today.

The first study of the productions of the minor theatres, how they were adapted to appeal to the local patrons and the audiences who worked and lived in these communities.

The first book-length study in any language of the presence and influence of Mei Lanfang, the internationally known Chinese actor who specialized in female roles on the twentieth-century international stage. Tian investigates Mei Lanfang's presence and influence and the transnational and intercultural appropriations of his art.