This 1986 study offers a challenging contribution to the on-going critical debate surrounding the English literary Renaissance. Although informed by the 'new historicism' and post-structuralism, Hidden Designs makes a plea for criticism to be practiced in its own name rather than in the name of theory, and opposes the hyper-professionalisation of literary studies in favour of the broader communal functions of criticism. Major Renaissance authors and their recent critics are placed under 'suspicion' as Crewe explores the elements of 'criminality' inherent in the powerful interests -personal, institutional, political and cultural - served by the literary enterprise, or channelled through it. Revisionary readings of Sidney, Spenser, Puttenham and Shakespeare are linked by a continuing commentary on the history and theoretical claims of Renaissance criticism.

Relying on the author's personal recollections as well as on J.M. Coetzee's autobiographical and fictional works, this book deals with Coetzee's formation as a writer of international prominence, whose life and writing career began in South Africa. Drawing on Coetzee's "South African" writings from Dusklands through Disgrace, the book considers Coetzee's initial positioning in provincial South African political and literary culture as well as his drastic reframing of South African "letters" and his breakout into a global career culminating in the award of the Nobel Prize in 2003. The book considers Coetzee almost exclusively in relation to the South Africa from which he emigrated in 1999, but also emphasizes his momentous revision and undoing of the marginalized genre of "South African Literature" in the service of global authorship. Written in the conviction that Coetzee's "South African" works remain his most impassioned and momentous ones, this book seeks to come to terms with their conditions of possibility and distinctive achievement.

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare's time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With definitive texts and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The English Renaissance has been the focus of intense interpretive activity. It has been a scene of trial for the critical methodologies of deconstruction, feminism, new historicism, psychoanalytic poststructuralism, and cultural studies. Trials of Authorship extends and challenges this theoretically informed criticism. Jonathan Crewe argues that the commitment to innovation, transgression, and radical change has increasingly obscured some powerfully resistant elements both in Renaissance culture and in these critical discourses themselves. He calls for a recognition of defensive, perverse, and self-limiting trends in Renaissance writing, and also of the conservative investment by critics in the Renaissance as a cultural epoch. Crewe focuses on the relatively stable poetic and cultural forms operative in the Renaissance. He argues that these established forms, which shape poetic composition, social interaction, and individual identity, are subject to only limited reconstruction by English authors in the sixteenth century. They facilitate and limit literary and social expression and result in more sharply conflicted literary production than current critics have been willing to acknowledge. Moreover, Crewe argues that while this literary production is dominantly masculinist, it nevertheless reveals the stresses of negotiating complex structures of class and gender, history and culture. The literary results are accordingly varied and do not lend themselves to uniform interpretation. Trials of Authorship presents a consecutive reading of English Renaissance authors from Wyatt to Shakespeare and redraws the existing picture of the English Renaissance in the sixteenth century. It does so by concentrating on authors whose canonical status is somewhat precarious, namely the poets Wyatt, Surrey, and Gascoigne, and the "non-literary" authors of two Tudor prose biographies. The book makes a case for the continuing significance of all the texts in question, while its emphasis on them also constitutes an intentional shift away from the Elizabethan period towards that of Henry VIII. 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 1990.

This 1986 study offers a challenging contribution to the on-going critical debate surrounding the English literary Renaissance. Although informed by the 'new historicism' and post-structuralism, Hidden Designs makes a plea for criticism to be practiced in its own name rather than in the name of theory, and opposes the hyper-professionalisation of literary studies in favour of the broader communal functions of criticism. Major Renaissance authors and their recent critics are placed under 'suspicion' as Crewe explores the elements of 'criminality' inherent in the powerful interests -personal, institutional, political and cultural - served by the literary enterprise, or channelled through it. Revisionary readings of Sidney, Spenser, Puttenham and Shakespeare are linked by a continuing commentary on the history and theoretical claims of Renaissance criticism.