Juan Ruiz's "Libro de Buen Amor" (1330/1343) is a lively and challenging medieval classic that ranks alongside the works of Dante and Chaucer. This volume is the first to systematically approach the role of humor in the "Libro de Buen Amor "through the treatment of the body, the visual, and the representation of first-person protagonist as lover. Haywood examines the place of the bawdy and the grotesque in the "Libro de Buen Amor" in relation to secular and sacred culture. This innovative study will be of interest to scholars and students interested in humor, cultural domains, medieval studies, and Spanish studies.

This book is an attempt to explore Shakespearean drama from the vantage point of the oppressed, invisible, and silent individuals and collectivities constructed in the plays. It examines the ideological apparatuses which produce and naturalise oppression and the political structures through which that oppression is sustained. Derek Cohen is concerned to demonstrate the many ways in which political and personal life, always interdependent, intersect. contradict, and disrupt one another often in the interests of and to the advantage of the dominant social ideology.

This Reader's Guide provides a timely critical overview that allows readers to orient themselves authoritatively in the rapidly-evolving field of contemporary British poetry. Focusing on key themes and issues, and a wide range of poets, the Guide captures the intersection between the historical and cultural contexts of critical debate today.

Ted Hughes's South Yorkshire tells the untold story of Hughes's Mexborough period (1938-1951) and demonstrates conclusively that Hughes's experiences in South Yorkshire in town and country, educationally, in literature and love were decisive in forming him as the poet of his subsequent fame.

What have we learned from the first experiments performed at the reconstructed Globe on Bankside? What light have recent productions shed on the way Shakespeare intended his plays to be seen? Written by the Leverhulme Fellow appointed to study and record actor use of this new-old playhouse, here is the first analytical account of the discoveries that have been made in its important first years, in workshops, rehearsals and performances. It shows how actors, directors and playgoers have responded to the demands of 'historical' constraints (and unexpected freedoms) to provide valuable new insights into the dynamics of Elizabethan theatre.

Despite the painstaking work of Pound scholars, the "mythos" of "The Cantos" has yet to be properly understood -- primarily because until now its occult sources have not been examined sufficiently. Drawing upon archival as well as recently published material, this study traces Pound's intimate engagement with specific occultists (W.B. Yeats, Allen Upward, Alfred Orage, and G.R.S. Mead) and their ideas. The author argues that speculative occultism was a major factor in the evolution of Pound's extraordinary aesthetic and religious sensibility, much noticed in Pound criticism.

The discussion falls into two sections. The first section details Pound's interest in particular occult movements. It describes the tradition of Hellenistic occultism from Eleusis to the present, and establishes that Pound's contact with the occult began at least as early as his undergraduate years and that he came to London already primed on the occult. Many of his London acquaintances were unquestionably occultists.

The second section outlines a tripartite schema for "The Cantos" ("katabasis/dromena/epopteia") which, in turn, is applied to the poem. It is argued here that "The Cantos" is structured on the model of a initiation rather than a journey, and that the poem does not so much describe an initiation rite as enact one for the reader.

In exploring and attempting to understand Pounds' occultism and its implications to his Pounds'] oeuvre, Tryphonopoulos sheds new light upon one of the great works of modern Western literature.

Destabilizing Milton challenges the widely accepted view of Milton as a poet of absolute, unquestioning certainty. In Paradise Lost , Milton confronts the failure of the Revolution by creating a poem that refuses to grant the reader any interpretive stability or certainty. Doubts can no longer be contained and concepts once marked by a 'fundamental immobility' now seem unstable at best. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes equally reflect Milton's deep ambivalences after the collapse of the Republic. Far from confirming his earlier ideals, in his later poetry, Milton subjects his culture's most cherished beliefs, such as the goodness of God, to withering scrutiny, while refusing the comfort of orthodox answers.

Drawing from a broad range of contemporary British poets, including Thomas Kinsella, Kathleen Jamie, and Alice Oswald, this study examines the inherently spatial and affective nature of our engagement with poetry. Adding to the expanding field of geocritical studies, Yeung specifically discusses ideas of space and constructions of voice in poetry.

In Andre du Bouchet: Poetic Forms of Attention, Emma Wagstaff provides the first book-length study in English of this major poet of the second half of the twentieth century. She shows how Du Bouchet's rigorous and innovative creative and critical writing advances our understanding of attention. Du Bouchet is known as a post-war poet of the natural world and the space of the page. Far from just a solitary writer, however, he engaged with others through his work as editor, critic, and translator, and his involvement in the protests of May 1968. Emma Wagstaff shows how his writing demonstrates nuanced attention to language, time, nature, and art, and incites a 'slow' response on the part of the reader.

This interdisciplinary collection explores the divergence or convergence of freedom and terror in a range of Byron's works. Challenging the binary opposition of historicism and critical theory, it combines topical debates in a manner that is sensitive both to the circumstances of their emergence and to their relevance for the twenty-first century.

Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative is a study of the varying relationships between verse and prose in a series of Old Norse-Icelandic saga narratives. It shows how the interplay of skaldic verse, with its metrical intricacy and cryptic diction, and saga prose, with its habitual spare clarity, can be used to achieve a wide variety of sophisticated stylistic and psychological effects. In sagas, there is a fundamental distinction between verses which are ostensibly quoted to corroborate what is stated in the narrative, and verses which are presented as the speech of characters in the saga. Corroborative verses are typical of, but not confined to, historical writings, the verses acting as a footnote to the narrative. Dialogue verses, with their illusion that saga characters break into verse at crucial points in the story, belong to the realm of fiction. This study, which focuses on historical writings such as Agrip and Heimskringla, and three of the major family sagas, Eyrbyggja saga, Gisla saga and Grettis saga, shows that a close reading of the prosimetrum in the narrative can be used to chart the complex and delicate boundaries between history and fiction in the sagas. When skaldic stanzas are presented as the dialogue of saga characters, the characteristic naturalism of these narratives is breached. But some saga authors, as this book shows, extend still further the expressiveness of saga narrative, presenting skaldic stanzas as the soliloquies of saga characters. This technique enables the direct articulation of emotion, and hence dramatic focalization of the narrative and the creation of psychological climaxes. As an epilogue, Heather O'Donoghue considers the absence ofsuch effects in Hrafnkels saga--a highly literary narrative without verses.

Richard Bradford's new introduction to poetry begins with and answers the slippery question, 'what is poetry?'. The book provides a compact history of English poetry from the 16th century to the present day and surveys the major critical and theoretical approaches to verse. It tackles the important issues of gender, race and nationality and concludes with a lengthy account of how to recognise good poetry. This engaging and readable book is accessible to all readers, from those who simply enjoy poetry through university first years to graduate students. Poetry: The Ultimate Guide provides the technical and critical tools you need to approach and evaluate poetry, and to articulate your own views.

This classic edition of Donne's Divine Poems contains an extensive and invaluable critical apparatus by Helen Gardner.

From the publication of his first major volume in 1946, "Lord Weary's Castle, " to a few years before his death in 1977, Robert Lowell held sway as the premier English-language poet of his time. "Lord Weary's Castle" seemed to push poetic language and cultural critique in exciting new directions, yet they were directions sanctioned by the New Criticism of his time. In 1959, Lowell's "Life Studies" dramatically broke the very traditions he had previously revitalized. During the 1960s, his works elaborated his new poetic mode and engaged with personal, political, and historical issues. But with the 1973 publication of his poetic trilogy, "History, For Lizzie and Harriet, " and "The Dolphin, " his reputation suffered. Though his final work, the autobiographical "Day by Day"--published shortly before his death in 1977--was favorably received, critics continued to attack him in the decades that followed.

Thus Lowell's reputation, as this volume makes clear, has fluctuated, and at the close of the twentieth century, there is still no critical consensus about any aspect of his work. This book provides a representative sample of the critical discourse concerning Lowell's poetry, drama, and prose, and shows that discourse at its most varied and vital. An introductory essay surveys the response to Lowell's writings. The first three sections then track Lowell's volumes chronologically. Most of his books receive one or two reviews followed by several scholarly essays, arranged in the order of their publication. Along with the reprinted articles are two essays written specifically for this volume. The fourth section presents several broad overviews of Lowell and his works, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources concludes the book. The volume also contains an essay by Lowell himself, in which he reflects on his career.

This book argues that Romantic-era writers used the figure of the minstrel to imagine authorship as a social, responsive enterprise unlike the solitary process portrayed by Romantic myths of the lone genius. Simpson highlights the centrality of the minstrel to many important literary developments from the Romantic era through to the 1840s.

Taking as its starting point Delmore Schwartz's self-appointment as both a 'poet of the Hudson River' and 'laureate of the Atlantic, ' this book comprehensively reassesses the poetic achievement of a critically neglected writer. Runchman reads Schwartz's poetry in relation to its national and international perspectives

Called by her contemporaries the "Tenth Muse," Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695) has continued to stir both popular and scholarly imaginations. While generations of Mexican schoolchildren have memorized her satirical verses, only since the 1970s has her writing received consistent scholarly attention., focused on complexities of female authorship in the political, religious, and intellectual context of colonial New Spain. This volume examines those areas of scholarship that illuminate her work, including her status as an iconic figure in Latin American and Baroque letters, popular culture in Mexico and the United States, and feminism. By addressing the multiple frameworks through which to read her work, this research guide serves as a useful resource for scholars and students of the Baroque in Europe and Latin America, colonial Novohispanic religious institutions, and women's and gender studies. The chapters are distributed across four sections that deal broadly with different aspects of Sor Juana's life and work: institutional contexts (political, economic, religious, intellectual, and legal); reception history; literary genres; and directions for future research. Each section is designed to provide the reader with a clear understanding of the current state of the research on those topics and the academic debates within each field.

Like Paris in the '20s, Berlin in the early thirties was one of the most exciting cities in the world. As the Weimar Republic sputtered to a close and war loomed on the horizon, the city was a magnet for talented writers and artists. It was in this now-vanished time and place that W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood lived, wrote and slept together. Norman Page tells the story of how these years shaped these important writers and, in doing so, illuminates a bygone era.

This is the first full-length study of the extraordinary period of intense poetic activity in Belfast known as the Ulster Renaissance - a time when young Northern Irish poets such as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, James Simmons, and Paul Muldoon began crafting their art, and tuning their voices through each other. Drawing extensively upon new archival material, as well as personal interviews and correspondence, The Ulster Renaissance argues that these poets' friendships and rivalries were crucial to their autonomous artistic development. The book also sheds new light on the idea of a collaborative Belfast coterie - often treated derisively by critics - and shows that the poets frequently engaged in efforts to promote a cohesive 'Northern' literary community, distinct from that which existed in London and Dublin. It suggests that it was this cohesion - at turns inclusive and confining - which ultimately challenged the Belfast poets to find their individual voices.

Frances Harper was renowned in her lifetime not only as an activist who rallied on behalf of blacks, women, and the poor, but as a pioneer of the tradition of 'protest' literature, whose immense popularity did much to develop an audience for poetry in America. This collection of her poems is drawn from ten volumes published between 1854 and 1901. Their main issues are oppression, Christianity, and social and moral reform. Consolidating the oral tradition and the ballad form, and merging dramatic details and imagery with a strong political and racial awareness, Harper's poetry represented a distinctly Afro-American discourse that was to inspire generations of black writers.

This book chronicles the rise of goddess worship in the region of Bengal from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present. Focusing on the goddesses Kali and Uma, McDermott examines lyrical poems written by devotees from Ramprasad Sen (ca. 1718-1775) to Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976).

Exploring the diverse factors that persuaded Christopher Columbus that he could reach the fabled "East" by sailing west, Dante, Columbus and the Prophetic Tradition considers, first, the impact of Dante's Divine Comedy and the apocalyptic prophetic tradition that it reflects, on Columbus's perception both of the cosmos and the eschatological meaning of his journey to what he called an 'other world.' In so doing, the book considers how affinities between himself and the exiled poet might have led Columbus to see himself as a divinely appointed agent of the apocalypse and his enterprise as the realization of the spiritual journey chronicled in the Comedy. As part of this study, the book necessarily examines the cultural space that Dante's poem, its geography, cosmography and eschatology, enjoyed in late fifteenth century Spain as well as Columbus's own exposure to it. As it considers how Italian writers and artists of the late Renaissance and Counter Reformation received the news of Columbus' 'discovery' and appropriated the figure of Dante and the pseudo-prophecy of the Comedy to interpret its significance, the book examines how Tasso, Ariosto, Stradano and Stigliani, in particular, forge a link between Dante and Columbus to present the latter as an inheritor of an apostolic tradition that traces back to the Aeneid. It further highlights the extent to which Italian writers working in the context of the Counter Reformation, use a Dantean filter to propagate the notion of Columbus as a new Paul, that is, a divinely appointed apostle to the New World, and the Roman Church as the rightful emperor of the souls encountered there.

A thorough and scholarly study of Spenser and Shakespeare and their contrary artistry, covering themes of theology, psychology, the depictions of passion and intellect, moral counsel, family hierarchy, self-love, temptation, folly, allegory, female heroism, the supernatural and much more. Renaissance psychologies examines the distinct and polarised emphasis of these two towering intellects and writers of the early modern period. It demonstrates how pervasive was the influence of Spenser on Shakespeare, as in the "playful metamorphosis of Gloriana into Titania" in A Midsummer Night's Dream and its return from Spenser's moralizing allegory to the Ovidian spirit of Shakespeare's comedy. It will appeal to students and lecturers in Spenser studies, Renaissance poetry and the wider fields of British literature, social and cultural history, ethics and theology. -- .

Spenser's Monstrous Regiment is a stimulating and scholarly account of how the experience of living and writing in Ireland qualified Spenser's attitude towards female regiment and challenged his notions of English nationhood. Including a trenchant discussion of the influence of colonialism upon the structure, themes, imagery, and language of Spenser's poetry, this is the first major study of Spenser's canon to engage with primary Gaelic materials in its assessment of his relationship with native Irish and Old English culture. It also provides the first detailed analysis of his association with Lord Grey through examination of the secretarial letters currently held in the PRO.