This anthology recovers a tradition of writing to which some of the greatest medieval and Renaissance poets - women as well as men - contributed. Centring on Shakespeare's neglected A Louers Complaint, it includes `female'-voiced lyrics, chronicle poems, and fictional letters by a range of authors from Chaucer to Aphra Behn and Henry Carey. The texts are freshly edited from early manuscript and printed sources, and extensive, helpful glosses are provided. In his illuminating introduction, John Kerrigan outlines the development of 'female complaint', indicates how cultural pressures shaped it, and argues that the time is ripe for a revaluation of this literary genre. Shedding new light on Shakespeare and on the conventions of historical, pastoral, and epistolary discourse, Motives of Woe will be of interest to scholars in several branches of medieval and early modern studies.

This richly informed book brings together essays by a leading scholar-critic on both major and less celebrated writers, from Sidney, Shakespeare, and Drummond (a new piece) to the late Restoration, to reconfigure the familiar and help extend the canon. Always alert to the debates that have raged in literary studies, it highlights the distinctive qualities of poetry and drama.

Seventeenth-century "English Literature" has long been thought about in narrowly English terms. Archipelagic English corrects this by devolving anglophone writing, showing how much remarkable work was produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and how preoccupied such English authors as Shakespeare, Milton, and Marvell were with the often fraught interactions between ethnic, religious, and national groups around the British-Irish archipelago. This book transforms our understanding of canonical texts from Macbeth to Defoe's Colonel Jack, but it also shows the significance of a whole series of authors (from William Drummond in Scotland to the Earl of Orrery in County Cork) who were prominent during their lifetimes but who have since become neglected because they do not fit the Anglocentric paradigm. With its European and imperial dimensions, and its close attention to the cultural make-up of early modern Britain and Ireland, Archipelagic English authoritatively engages with, questions, and develops the claim now made by historians that the crises of the seventeenth century stem from the instabilities of a state-system which, between 1603 and 1707, was multiple, mixed, and inclined to let local quarrels spiral into all-consuming conflict. This is a major, interdisciplinary contribution to literary and historical scholarship which is also set to influence present-day arguments about devolution, unionism, and nationalism in Britain and Ireland.

Why does comedy matter? Is it celebratory or subversive? What makes it flourish, and which creative forces resist it? English Comedy addresses these and related questions by invoking a variety of works from Aristophanes to Walt Disney, while focusing on the traditions of comic writing in England. Poetry, the novel and (above all) drama are examined to assess the constrictions and liberations of genre, the negotiations or divergences between comic practice and theory, and the dynamics of theatrical language. Ranging from medieval and Renaissance drama through Romantic poetry to twentieth-century literature and philosophy, English Comedy makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the heritage of comic writing.

John Kerrigan is one of the foremost critics of English literature. This richly informed collection brings together his essays on such major figures as Sir Philip Sidney and Milton, but also less celebrated writers, including Thomas Carew and - in a new piece - William Drummond, to reconfigure the familiar and help extend the canon. Shakespeare looms large; his plays and poems, and his influence on Keats, are the subject of half the book. But themes and issues are pursued from the 1580s to the late Restoration. Kerrigan acutely reassesses the nature of early modern texts-their production and reconstruction by writers, printers, theatre companies, and readers-and their relationship with socio-political circumstance. This original and eloquent book shows what criticism can do when closely engaged with verbal fabric and form. Always alert to the scholarly and theoretical debates that have raged within literary studies, it concentrates on drawing out the distinctive qualities of poems and plays.

The theme of the `body and soul' relationship in medieval texts and modern reworkings. The theme of the body-and-soul relationship in medieval texts and in modern reworkings of medieval matter is explored in the articles here, specifically the representation of the body in romance; the relevance of bawdy tales to the cultural experience of authors and readers in the middle ages; the function of despair, or melancholy, in medieval and Renaissance literature; and the political significance of late medieval representations of `bodies' in the chroniclers' accounts of the Rising and in Gower's poems. Two articles are devoted to modern retellings of medieval themes: John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, seen in relation to the traditional acta martyrum, and the medieval revival in Tory Britain exemplified in Douglas Oliver's The Infant and the Pearl. Contributors: PAMELA JOSEPH BENSON, NIGEL S. THOMPSON, JON WHITMAN, JEROME MANDEL, BARBARA NOLAN, YASUNARI TAKADA, YVETTE MARCHAND, ROBERT F. YEAGER, JOERG O. FICHTE, JOHN KERRIGAN

This remarkable, innovative book explores the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges, and the other utterances and acts by which characters commit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come. In early modern England, such binding language was everywhere. Oaths of office, marriage vows, legal bonds, and casual, everyday profanity gave shape and texture to life. The proper use of such language, and the extent of its power to bind, was argued over by lawyers, religious writers, and satirists, and these debates inform literature and drama. Shakespeare's Binding Language gives a freshly researched account of these contexts, but it is focused on Shakespeare's plays. What motives should we look for when characters asseverate or promise? How far is binding language self-persuasive or deceptive? When is it allowable to break a vow? How do oaths and promises structure an audience's expectations? Across the sweep of Shakespeare's career, from the early histories to the late romances, this book opens new perspectives on key dramatic moments and illuminates language and action. Each chapter gives an account of a play or group of plays, yet the study builds to a sustained investigation of some of the most important systems, institutions, and controversies in early modern England, and of the wiring of Shakespearean dramaturgy. Scholarly but accessible, and offering startling insights, this is a major contribution to Shakespeare studies by one of the leading figures in the field.

When a volume of poetry entitled 'Shake-speares Sonnets. Neuer before Imprinted' appeared in 1609, Shakespeare was forty-five and most of his greatest plays had seen several performances. Some of the sonnets, speaking of the begetting of children, mortality and memory, art, desire and jealousy, are addressed to a beloved youth; others are addressed to a treacherous mistress, a 'dark lady'. Appended to the sonnets is A Lover's Complaint, a beautiful poem in rhyme royal in which a young woman is overheard lamenting her betrayal by a heartless seducer.

While Shakespeare's biographers continue their investigations, readers may find the 'secret' of the sonnets in the poetry itself. In this spirit John Kerrigan provides an illuminating introduction to the volume as a whole, together with commentaries on each poem, a textual history and advice about further reading.

Revenge has long been central to European culture. From Homer to Nietzsche, St Paul to Sylvia Plath, numerous major authors have been fascinated by its emotional intensity, and by the questions which it raises about violence, sexuality, death, and the nature of justice. In this exceptionally learned and lively book, John Kerrigan explores the literature of vengeance from Greek tragedy to postmodernism, ranging through material in several languages, as well as through opera, painting, and film, while opening new perspectives on such famailiar English works as Hamlet, Clarissa, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. By means of broad historical analysis, but also through subtle attention to the fabric of individual texts, Kerrigan shows how evolving attitudes to retribution have shaped and reconstituted tragedy in the West, and elucidates the remarkable capacity of his ancient theme to generate innovative works of art. Although Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon is a literary study, it makes fresh and ambitious use of ideas from anthropology, social theory, and moral philosophy. As a result it will be of interest to students in a variety of disciplines, as well as to the general reader.

Seventeenth-century 'English Literature' has long been thought about in narrowly English terms. Archipelagic English corrects this by devolving anglophone writing, showing how much remarkable work was produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and how preoccupied such English authors as Shakespeare, Milton, and Marvell were with the often fraught interactions between ethnic, religious, and national groups around the British-Irish archipelago. This book transforms our understanding of canonical texts from Macbeth to Defoe's Colonel Jack, but it also shows the significance of a whole series of authors (from William Drummond in Scotland to the Earl of Orrery in County Cork) who were prominent during their lifetimes but who have since become neglected because they do not fit the Anglocentric paradigm. With its European and imperial dimensions, and its close attention to the cultural make-up of early modern Britain and Ireland, Archipelagic English authoritatively engages with, questions, and develops the claim now made by historians that the crises of the seventeenth century stem from the instabilities of a state-system which, between 1603 and 1707, was multiple, mixed, and inclined to let local quarrels spiral into all-consuming conflict. This is a major, interdisciplinary contribution to literary and historical scholarship which is also set to influence present-day arguments about devolution, unionism, and nationalism in Britain and Ireland.

How original was Shakespeare and how was Shakespeare original? This lucid, innovative book sets about answering these questions by putting them in historical context and investigating how the dramatist worked with his sources: plays, poems, chronicles and prose romances. Shakespeare's Originality unlocks its topic with rewarding precision and flair, showing through a series of case studies that range across the output-from the mature comedies to the great tragedies, from Richard III to The Tempest-what can be learned about the artistry of the plays by thinking about these sources (including newly identified ones) after several decades of neglect. Discussion is enriched by such matters as Elizabethan ruffs and feathers, actors' footwork, chronicle history, modern theatre productions, debts to classical tragedy, scepticism, magic and science, the agricultural revolution, and ecological catastrophe. This is authoritative, lively work by one of the world's leading Shakespearians, accessible to the general reader as well as indispensable for students.

This remarkable, innovative book explores the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges and the other utterances and acts by which characters commit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come. In early modern England, such binding language was everywhere. Oaths of office, marriage vows, legal bonds, and casual, everyday profanity gave shape and texture to life. The proper use of such language, and the extent of its power to bind, was argued over by lawyers, religious writers, and satirists, and these debates inform literature and drama. Shakespeare's Binding Language gives a freshly researched account of these contexts, but it is focused on the plays. What motives should we look for when characters asseverate or promise? How far is binding language self-persuasive or deceptive? When is it allowable to break a vow? How do oaths and promises structure an audience's expectations? Across the sweep of Shakespeare's career, from the early histories to the late romances, this book opens new perspectives on key dramatic moments and illuminates language and action. Each chapter gives an account of a play or group of plays, yet the study builds to a sustained investigation of some of the most important systems, institutions, and controversies in early modern England, and of the wiring of Shakespearean dramaturgy. Scholarly but accessible, and offering startling insights, this is a major contribution to Shakespeare studies by one of the leading figures in the field.