"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. "The Critical Heritage" set is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini-sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) or as individual volumes.

This series gathers together a body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre, a popular poet and author of the influential novel "Oroonoko". This is a seven-volume set of all her works. Volumes 5,6 and 7 are scheduled for publication in early 1996.

Introduction - Cuchulain and the Sidhe: Vision and Tragic Encounter - The Landscape of Tragedy: Three Dance Plays - A Tragic Universe: The Framework of A Vision - Four Plays and the Problem of Evil - Conclusion: The Death of the Hero - Notes - Bibliography - Index

Peterson has done a great service to students of African-American theater. . . . Peterson's scholarship is impressive; the book's format is inviting . . . an indispensable reference book for academic libraries. "Choice"

This reference volume addresses an often overlooked area in the history of the American theatre, the contributions of early black playwrights and dramatic writers. At a time when they were denied full participation in many aspects of American life, including the mainstream of the theatre itself, black artists were compiling an impressive record of achievement on the American stage. This book, the most comprehensive on the subject, provides a complete look at these achievements by offering biographical information and a catalog of works for approximately 200 writers, including playwrights, librettists, screenwriters, and radio scriptwriters. From the emergence of black playwrights in the time prior to the Civil War, to the early days of film and radio in this century, the efforts of early black writers are fully documented in this work.

The book begins with an author's preface and is followed by an introductory essay that discusses the development of black American playwrights from the antebellum period to World War II. The heart of the book, the biographical directory, is organized alphabetically, with each entry providing highlights of the author's life and career; collected anthologies that include any works; and an annotated chronological list of individual dramatic works, including genre, length, synopses, production history, prizes and awards, and script sources. Three appendixes offer information on other playwrights and their works, additional librettists and descriptions of their shows, and a chronology of dramatic works by genre. A bibliography cites such information sources as reference books and critical studies, dissertations, play anthologies, and newspapers and periodicals frequently consulted, as well as significant libraries and repositories. The book concludes with title and general indexes and an index to early black theatre organizations. This work will be an important reference source for courses in black American drama and theatre history, and a valuable addition to both public and academic libraries.

Mourning and memorialization are at the very centre of literary culture. They take on forms deeply resonant of the sundry traditions of poetic elegy even when those elegiac conventions are displaced, concealed, or plainly unintentional. For all of its pervasiveness, however, the "elegy" remains remarkably ill-defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a sign of a lament for the dead. This Handbook is the single most comprehensive study of its subject. It provides both a historical survey and a thematic engagement with the relevant issues in elegy. It is responsive to a pressing need for clarification of the relevant issues, and to the exciting developments currently under way in elegy studies.
Such a volume is especially timely, since in recent years there has been a veritable explosion in interest in elegies about AIDS, cancer, and war; various reconsiderations of the role of women in the history of elegiac writing; and readings of elegy in relation to ethics, philosophy and theory, and political structure.
With 38 chapters by leading specialists, ranging from Gregory Nagy's reconsideration of Ancient Greek elegy through Stuart Curran's novel engagement with Romantic elegiac hybridity, and on to Elizabeth Helsinger's consideration of elegy and painting, this Handbook offers groundbreaking scholarship and remarkable historical breadth.

Shakespeare's plays were immensely popular in their own day - so why do we refuse to think of them as mass entertainment? In Pleasing Everyone, author Jeffrey Knapp opens our eyes to the uncanny resemblance between Renaissance drama and the incontrovertibly mass medium of Golden-Age Hollywood cinema. Through fascinating explorations of such famous plays as Hamlet, The Roaring Girl, and The Alchemist, and such celebrated films as Citizen Kane, The Jazz Singer, and City Lights, Knapp challenges some of our most basic assumptions about the relationship between art and mass audiences. Above all, Knapp encourages us to resist the prejudice that mass entertainment necessarily simplifies and cheapens whatever it touches. As Knapp shows, it was instead the ceaseless pressure to please everyone that helped generate the astonishing richness and complexity of Renaissance drama as well as of Hollywood film.

Samuel Beckett's 1976 Television play Ghost Trio is one of his most beautiful and mysterious works. It is also the play that most clearly demonstrates Beckett's imaginative and aesthetic engagement with the visual arts and the history of painting in particular. Drawing on the work of Stanley Cavell and Michael Fried, On Ghost Trio demonstrates Beckett's exploration of the relationship between theatricality, absorption and objecthood, and shows how his work anticipates the development of video and installation art. In doing so Conor Carville develops a new and highly original reading of Beckett's art, rooted in both archival sources and philosophical aesthetics.

This major work brings together, for the first time in a single volume, all the recognized sources of Marlowe's dramatic work. Many of the forty-two texts presented here are of outstanding interest in their own right. Together they illuminate the cultural milieu which fostered Marlowe's talent, and deepen our appreciation of his dramatic methods.
* Each of the texts is accessibly presented for the modern reader and is fully annotated.
* Works in Latin or foreign vernaculars are translated, many for the first time, and modern spelling and punctuation are used throughout.
* The sources for each play are examined individually and are thoroughly edited.
Few libraries provide the range of sources contained in this one volume. The editors include texts of works such as the English Faust-Book from which Marlowe borrowed heavily, and provide substantial extracts from other books with which he was no doubt familiar.
This book is an invaluable resource for all those interested in Marlowe and the development of Elizabethan theatre.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203379837

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the fourth volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.

Introduction - PART 1 - The Ghost - Thyestes and Revenge Structure - The Spanish Tragedy: Dagger and Mirror - Antonio's Revenge: Stoic and Player - The Revenger's Tragedy: Mirror and Dagger - PART 2 HAMLET - Commandment - Performance - Unmasking - I Antithesis - II Deliverance - Appendix - Notes - Index

Zoe Akins was an artist who became successful as a Broadway playwright. For Akins, this was a hard earned title, which she achieved after years of false starts and near misses. She wrote over 40 plays, 18 of which appeared on the Broadway stage between 1919 and 1944. Also in her oeuvre are two novels, numerous short stories and essays, several film and television scripts, and two volumes of poetry. Akins constantly tried to balance her writing style so that it would suit her own moral code and simultaneously appeal to a paying audience. She was a woman in a field dominated by men, but she persevered and accomplished much including winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1935 for "The Old Maid."

This volume follows the progression of Akin's writing career. It primarily focuses on her Broadway plays, but also highlights other plays and writings (such as poems, film scripts, and short stories) which reflect various aspects of Akin's artistry. It will appeal to theatre, history, and women's studies scholars, as well as anyone interested in the literary career of a unique individual.

I come no more to make you laugh; things now That bear a weighty and a serious brow, Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, We now present. Those that can pity here May, if they think it well, let fall a tear: The subject will deserve it. Such as give Their money out of hope they may believe May here find truth too. Those that come to see Only a show or two, and so agree The play may pass, if they be still and willing, I'll undertake may see away their shilling Richly in two short hours. Only they That come to hear a merry bawdy play, A noise of targets, or to see a fellow In a long motley coat guarded with yellow, Will be deceiv'd; for, gentle hearers, know,

"Performing Libertinism in Charles II's Court: Politics, Drama, Sexuality" examines the performative nature of Restoration libertinism by reading reports of libertine activities and texts of libertine plays within the context of the fraternization between George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Sir Charles Sedley, Sir George Etherege, and William Wycherley. Webster argues that libertines, both real and imagined, performed traditionally secretive acts, including excessive drinking, sex, sedition, and sacrilege, in the public sphere. This eruption of the private into the public challenged a Stuart ideology that distinguished between the nation's public life and the king's and his subjects' private consciences. Although this eruption was contained by the early 1680s, the libertine performances this book analyzes nevertheless played an important part in the history of English radicalism.

When it was first published, "Radical Tragedy" was hailed as a groundbreaking reassessment of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. An engaged reading of the past with compelling contemporary significance, "Radical Tragedy" remains a landmark study of Renaissance drama and a classic of cultural materialist criticism. The corrected and reissued third edition of this critically acclaimed work includes a candid new Preface by the author and features a Foreword by Terry Eagleton.

Demastes, in his interesting study of the work of David Rabe, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Charles Fuller, Beth Henley, and Marsha Norman, examines how these playwrights utilize the realist format to redirect perception of human life, how they cope with the consciously taken 'task of challenging old systems of thought from a base of new perspective.' The analyses of individual plays are preceded by a brief review of some earlier dramatic theories of realism revealing the roots and antecedents of the new forms. . . . Beyond Naturalism is a very useful and valuable contribution to drama and theatre studies. American Literature Demastes explores the work of a group of playwrights who have moved beyond the often-maligned naturalist approach to create what he terms the new realism in American theatre. Demastes argues that this new realism is separate and distinct from the narrow focus of naturalism and is the result of tapping into a growing tradition inherited from the experimental work of prior decades such as absurdist theatre and experimentation of the 1960s. The playwrights who most exemplify the new realism--David Rabe, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Charles Fuller, Beth Henley, and Marsha Norman--are examined in depth. Each has separately taken on the challenge to modify the forms of traditional realism to fit more modern visions of existence. In the process, they have broken from naturalism, infusing realism with fresh and contemporary perspectives of the world around them. Demastes shows that even though these playwrights' return to realism has won them larger audiences and greater accessibility, the break from naturalist logic has sometimes confused American critics and audiences--leading them to conclude such works to be bad drama. To uncover the various points of confusion, Demastes not only analyzes the playwrights' contributions but also examines the critical impressions of their productions to assess the reactions of a theatre-going public raised on naturalist assumptions and now asked to adapt to the new alterations confronting them. This two-pronged approach enables the reader to both explore the evolution of new realism and assess the degree to which it can legitimately be considered a new form of American theatre.

Edward Sakamoto is one of Hawai'i's most popular playwrights. His skillfully constructed depictions of ""local life"" and command of stylized narrative devices have earned him recognition and acclaim both in the Islands and elsewhere in the U.S. The three plays collected here present an expertly dramatized panorama of life in Hawai'i from 1959 to 1994. A'ala Park explores a working-class milieu with honesty and humor in this gripping study of a young man stunted by a slum environment at the time of statehood. Stew Rice, juxtaposing the hopes of the late 1950s with the realities of the late 1970s, charts the fortunes of three highschool buddies and the consequences of their individual decisions to leave or remain in Hawai'i. Aloha Las Vegas centers on a retired baker, land rich but cash poor, who wrestles with the decision to relocate to Las Vegas in 1994. Sakamoto is quick to challenge easy affirmations and identifications. Beneath their feel-good humor and celebration of local language and culture, the plays have a depth and an unpredictability. As Dennis Carroll observes in his Introduction, all of them center on the theme of ""Hawai'i versus the mainland"" and the challenges of relocation--the ambiguities of the definition of ""home"" and whether it can ever be recovered or regained--and the special qualities of local life that can or cannot be transplanted. This theme is relevant to all Americans familiar with the immigrant experience, not only those living in Hawai'i. A glossary of pidgin words and terms is included.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1961.

Christopher Marlowe: A Literary Life situates the individual works of Marlowe within the context of his overall literary career. Areas covered include: Marlowe's preference for foreign settings and his unusually accurate depictions of them; the importance of his scholarly background; his consistent portrayal of family groups as fissured and troubled; the challenge that his works posed to contemporary orthodoxies about religion, sexuality, and government; and the long and sometimes spectacular afterlife of his works and of his literary reputation as a whole.

Traditionally literary modernism has been seen as a movement marked by transcendent epiphanies, episodes of estrangement, and a privileging of the extraordinary. Yet modernist writings often take great pains to describe the material, seemingly insignificant details of daily life. Modernismand the Ordinary upends our perceived notions of the period's literature as it recognizes just how pivotal commonplace activities are to modernist aesthetics.
Through pointed readings of prose and poetry from both the U. S. and abroad, Liesl Olson highlights the variety of ways modernist writers represented the quotidian details of modern life, even during times of political crisis and war. Run of the mill experiences like walking to work, eating a sandwich, or mending a dress were often resistant to shock, and these daily actions presented a counter-force to the aesthetic of heightened affect with which modernism is often associated. In a series of persuasively argued chapters, we see how the ordinary operates in its many modernist manifestations: the minutiae of list-making and the decidedly unheroic qualities of Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses; Virginia Woolf's rendering of the ordinary as an affective experience in Mrs. Dalloway; the retreat into daily routine as a refuge from the tumult of World War II in Gertrude Stein's Mrs.Reynolds; Wallace Steven's conception of the commonplace as rooted in pragmatist philosophy; and how Beckett and Proust are simultaneously compelled and repelled by the banalities of modern life. These works are read alongside the ideas of philosophers such as William James, Henri Bergson, and Henri Lefebvre to illustrate how these artists responded to the difficulty of representing the mundane without making it transcendent.
A trenchant, richly textured monograph, Modernism and the Ordinary reveals how the non-transformative power of everyday experiences-what Virginia Woolf called the "cotton wool of daily life"-exerts a profound influence on the epoch-defining art of some of the twentieth century's most celebrated writers.

This is the first book to view Shakespeare's plays from the prospect of the premodern death arts, not only the ars moriendi tradition but also the plurality of cultural expressions of memento mori, funeral rituals, commemorative activities, and rhetorical techniques and strategies fundamental to the performance of the work of dying, death, and the dead. The volume is divided into two sections: first, critically nuanced examinations of Shakespeare's corpus and then, second, of Hamlet exclusively as the ultimate proving ground of the death arts in practice. This book revitalizes discussion around key and enduring themes of mortality by reframing Shakespeare's plays within a newly conceptualized historical category that posits a cultural divide-at once epistemological and phenomenological-between premodernity and the Enlightenment.