What makes Shakespeare's late plays so special? Through detailed analyses of key passages, Kate Aughterson shows how these plays portray a world of political intrigue, familial chaos and crisis, which teeters continually into tragedy: a world we can recognise today.
Part I of this engaging study:
- provides stimulating close readings of extracts from "The Tempest," "The Winter's Tale," "Cymbeline" and "Pericles
"- examines major topics such as openings, endings, familial roles, stage properties, spectacle and song
- offers suggestions for further work and summarizes the methods of analysis.
Part II supplies essential background material, including:
- detailed accounts of Shakespeare's literary and historical contexts
- samples from important critical works and performances.
With a helpful Further Reading section, this illuminating volume is ideal for anyone who wishes to appreciate and explore Shakespeare's late plays for themselves.

This is a unique essay collection on Jim Crace, locating his writing within contemporary philosophical, cultural and political debates. This timely first critical collection of essays on Crace's work provides a retrospective on his work to date, locating his work within a number of contemporary interdisciplinary critical and cultural perspectives and concerns, including post-humanism, post-millennial pastoralism, post-post feminism and gender, intersections between science and literary theory, environmental politics, the symbiotics of authorial and critical archival work, and the context of the burgeoning world of literary prizes. It includes additional contextual material in the form of an interview with Jim Crace and the re-publication of a seminal critical essay on "Craceland" by Adam Begley. As such this critical essay collection will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary fiction, and Crace's unique writing.

Shakespeare and Gender guides students, educators, practitioners and researchers through the complexities of the representation of gender and sexuality in Shakespeare's work. Informed by contemporary and early modern debates and insights into gender and sexuality, including intersectionality, feminist geography, queer and performance studies and fourth-wave feminism, this book provides a lucid and lively discussion of how gender and sexual identity are debated, contested and displayed in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Using close textual analysis hand-in- hand with diverse contextual materials, the book offers an accessible and intelligent introduction to how gender debates are integral to the plays and poems, and why we continue to read and perform them with this in mind. Topics and themes discussed include gendering madness, paternity and the patriarchy, sexuality, anxious masculinity, maternal bodies, gender transgression, and kingship and the male body politic.

This book explores the history of women's engagement with writing experimentally. Women writers have long used different narratives and modes of writing as a way of critiquing worlds and stories that they find themselves at odds with, but at the same time, as a way to participate in such spaces. Experimentation-of style, mode, voice, genre and language-has enabled women writers to be simultaneously creative and critical, engaged in and yet apart from stories and cultures that have so often seen them as 'other'. This collection shows that women writers in English over the past 400 years have challenged those ideas not only through explicit polemic and alternative representations but through disrupting the very modes of representation and story itself.

This comprehensive anthology collects in one volume primary texts and documents relevant to literature, culture and intellectual life in England from 1550 to 1660. Through both well-known and forgotten texts that were influential at the time, the volume introduces controversies, ideas, and views on all areas of cultural interest in early modern England. Sections include:

* religion and theology
* politics and economics
* society
* education and humanism
* literary and cultural theories
* science and magic
* exploration and traffic.

Each section provides historical breadth, showing change and continuity. The English Renaissance enables students to compare the ideology, content and rhetorical strategies of 'literary' and 'aesthetic' texts with 'historical' or 'political' events and texts.

Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook is an invaluable collection of accounts of women and femininity in early modern England. The volume is divided thematically into nine sections, each with an accessible introduction, notes on sources and an annotated bibliography. The sections are:
* Theology
* Biology
* Conduct
* Sexuality and Motherhood
* Politics and Law
* Education
* Work
* Writing and Speaking
* Feminism
Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook brings together sources ranging from medical documents and political pamphlets to sermons and the Bible, as well as literary sources. Providing a historical context to issues of gender in the Renasissance, it will be essential reading for students of the period, gender studies and cultural history.

"Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook" brings together extracts of significant accounts of woman and femininity in early modern England. Providing versatile and accessible readings of gender construction in this period, this book offers the reader a broader historical context, without the interpretive baggage of secondary readings.
"Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook" contains sources ranging from medical documents and political pamphlets to sermons and the Bible, as well as literary texts by and about women. Sections include: theology; physiology; conduct; sexuality and motherhood; politics and law; education; work; writing and speaking; and proto-feminisms. The selections within each section cover a wide chronology, from 1520 to 1680, as well as a range of viewpoints about each area.

Shakespeare and Gender guides students, educators, practitioners and researchers through the complexities of the representation of gender and sexuality in Shakespeare's work. Informed by contemporary and early modern debates and insights into gender and sexuality, including intersectionality, feminist geography, queer and performance studies and fourth-wave feminism, this book provides a lucid and lively discussion of how gender and sexual identity are debated, contested and displayed in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Using close textual analysis hand-in- hand with diverse contextual materials, the book offers an accessible and intelligent introduction to how gender debates are integral to the plays and poems, and why we continue to read and perform them with this in mind. Topics and themes discussed include gendering madness, paternity and the patriarchy, sexuality, anxious masculinity, maternal bodies, gender transgression, and kingship and the male body politic.

This comprehensive anthology collects together primary texts and documents relevant to the literature, culture and intellectual life in England between 1550 and 1660. Providing a combination of both well-known texts and forgotten texts that were influential at the time, "The English Renaissance" aims to give the reader an intimate first-hand experience of controversies, ideas, and views on all areas of cultural interest in early modern England. The book includes sections on: religion and theology; politics and economics; society; education and humanism; literary and cultural theories; science and magic; exploration; and traffic. The anthology provides historical breadth within each section, demonstrating change and continuity and easy accessibility to rarely available texts in a single volume. It enables students to compare the ideology, content and rhetorical strategies of "literary" and "aesthetic" texts with "historical" or "political" events and texts.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) is renowned as the first professional woman of literature and drama in English. Her career in the Restoration theatre extended over two decades, encompassing remarkable generic range and diversity. Her last five plays, written and performed between 1682 and 1696, include city comedies (The City-Heiress, The Luckey Chance), a farce (The Emperor of the Moon), a tragicomedy (The Widdow Ranter), and a comedy of family inheritance (The Younger Brother). These plays exemplify Behn's skills in writing for individual performers, and exhibit the topical political engagement for which she is renowned. They witness to Behn's popularity with theatre audiences during the politically and financially difficult years of the 1680s and even after her death. Informed by the most up-to-date research in computational attribution, this fully annotated edition draws on recent scholarship to provide a comprehensive guide to Behn's work, and the literary, theatrical and political history of the Restoration.

This book explores the history of women's engagement with writing experimentally. Women writers have long used different narratives and modes of writing as a way of critiquing worlds and stories that they find themselves at odds with, but at the same time, as a way to participate in such spaces. Experimentation-of style, mode, voice, genre and language-has enabled women writers to be simultaneously creative and critical, engaged in and yet apart from stories and cultures that have so often seen them as 'other'. This collection shows that women writers in English over the past 400 years have challenged those ideas not only through explicit polemic and alternative representations but through disrupting the very modes of representation and story itself.

This is a unique essay collection on Jim Crace, locating his writing within contemporary philosophical, cultural and political debates. This timely first critical collection of essays on Crace's work provides a retrospective on his work to date, locating his work within a number of contemporary interdisciplinary critical and cultural perspectives and concerns, including post-humanism, post-millennial pastoralism, post-post feminism and gender, intersections between science and literary theory, environmental politics, the symbiotics of authorial and critical archival work, and the context of the burgeoning world of literary prizes. It includes additional contextual material in the form of an interview with Jim Crace and the re-publication of a seminal critical essay on "Craceland" by Adam Begley. As such this critical essay collection will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary fiction, and Crace's unique writing.

What makes Shakespeare's late plays so special? Through detailed analyses of key passages, Kate Aughterson shows how these plays portray a world of political intrigue, familial chaos and crisis, which teeters continually into tragedy: a world we can recognise today. Part I of this engaging study: * provides stimulating close readings of extracts from The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline and Pericles * examines major topics such as openings, endings, familial roles, stage properties, spectacle and song * offers suggestions for further work and summarizes the methods of analysis. Part II supplies essential background material, including: * detailed accounts of Shakespeare's literary and historical contexts * samples from important critical works and performances. With a helpful Further Reading section, this illuminating volume is ideal for anyone who wishes to appreciate and explore Shakespeare's late plays for themselves.

Aphra Behn: The Comedies provides students with an approachable and fascinating analysis of Behn's dramaturgical abilities, showing particularly how she uses comic and dramatic conventions to radical ends. Kate Aughterson shows how the playwright forces her audience to engage with issues about gender and sexuality, whilst continuing to write witty and accessible plays.