Early Modern Others highlights instances of challenges to misogyny, racism, atheism, and antisemitism in the early modern period. Through deeply historicising early modern literature and looking at its political and social contexts, Peter C. Herman explores how early modern authors challenged the biases and prejudices of their age. By examining the works of Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger amongst others, Herman reveals that for every “-ism” in early modern English culture there was an “anti-ism” pushing back against it. The book investigates “others” in early modern literature through indigenous communities, women, religion, people of colour, and class. This innovative book shows that the early modern period was as complicated and as contradictory as the world today. It will offer valuable insight for anyone studying early modern literature and culture, as well as social justice and intersectionality.

Early Modern Others highlights instances of challenges to misogyny, racism, atheism, and antisemitism in the early modern period. Through deeply historicising early modern literature and looking at its political and social contexts, Peter C. Herman explores how early modern authors challenged the biases and prejudices of their age. By examining the works of Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger amongst others, Herman reveals that for every “-ism” in early modern English culture there was an “anti-ism” pushing back against it. The book investigates “others” in early modern literature through indigenous communities, women, religion, people of colour, and class. This innovative book shows that the early modern period was as complicated and as contradictory as the world today. It will offer valuable insight for anyone studying early modern literature and culture, as well as social justice and intersectionality.

Unspeakable: Literature and Terrorism from the Gunpowder Plot to 9/11 explores the representation of terrorism in plays, novels, and films across the centuries. Time and time again, writers and filmmakers including William Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Gillo Pontecorvo, Don DeLillo, John Updike, and Steven Spielberg refer to terrorist acts as beyond comprehension, "a deed without a name," but they do not stop there. Instead of creating works that respond to terrorism by providing comforting narratives reassuring audiences and readers of their moral superiority and the perfidy of the terrorists, these writers and filmmakers confront the unspeakable by attempting to see the world from the terrorist's perspective and by examining the roots of terrorist violence.

Unspeakable: Literature and Terrorism from the Gunpowder Plot to 9/11 explores the representation of terrorism in plays, novels, and films across the centuries. Time and time again, writers and filmmakers including William Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Gillo Pontecorvo, Don DeLillo, John Updike, and Steven Spielberg refer to terrorist acts as beyond comprehension, "a deed without a name," but they do not stop there. Instead of creating works that respond to terrorism by providing comforting narratives reassuring audiences and readers of their moral superiority and the perfidy of the terrorists, these writers and filmmakers confront the unspeakable by attempting to see the world from the terrorist's perspective and by examining the roots of terrorist violence.

This second edition of "Approaches to Teaching Milton's" Paradise Lost addresses Milton in the light of the digital age, new critical approaches to his poem, and his continued presence in contemporary culture. It aims to help instructors enliven the teaching of "Paradise Lost" and address the challenges presented to students by the poem--the early modern syntax and vocabulary, the political and theological contexts, and the abounding classical references.

The first part of the volume, "Materials," evaluates the many available editions of the poem, points to relevant reference works, recommends additional reading, and outlines useful audiovisual and online aids for teaching Milton's epic poem. The essays in the second part, "Approaches," are grouped by several themes: literary and historical contexts, characters, poetics, critical approaches, classrooms, and performance. The essays cover epic conventions and literary and biblical allusions, new approaches such as ecocriticism and masculinity studies, and reading Milton on the Web, among other topics.

The New Milton Criticism seeks to emphasize ambivalence and discontinuity in Milton's work and interrogate the assumptions and certainties in previous Milton scholarship. Contributors to the volume move Milton's open-ended poetics to the centre of Milton studies by showing how analysing irresolvable questions - religious, philosophical and literary critical - transforms interpretation and enriches appreciation of his work. The New Milton Criticism encourages scholars to embrace uncertainties in his writings rather than attempt to explain them away. Twelve critics from a range of countries, approaches and methodologies explore these questions in these new readings of Paradise Lost and other works. Sure to become a focus of debate and controversy in the field, this volume is a truly original contribution to early modern studies.

Terrorism has long been a major shaping force in the world. However, the meanings of terrorism, as a word and as a set of actions, are intensely contested. This volume explores how literature has dealt with terrorism from the Renaissance to today, inviting the reader to make connections between older instances of terrorism and contemporary ones, and to see how the various literary treatments of terrorism draw on each other. The essays demonstrate that the debates around terrorism only give the fictive imagination more room, and that fiction has a great deal to offer in terms of both understanding terrorism and our responses to it. Written by historians and literary critics, the essays provide essential knowledge to understand terrorism in its full complexity. As befitting a global problem, this book brings together a truly international group of scholars, with representatives from America, Scotland, Canada, New Zealand, Italy, Israel, and other countries.

"Among all manual arts used in this land, none is more famous for desert, or more beneficial to the commonwealth, than is the most necessary art of clothing." So begins Thomas Deloney's extraordinary prose narrative, dedicated "To All Famous Clothworkers in England." It is an amiable and remarkably entertaining work of fiction-and also one that connects powerfully with the real world of sixteenth-century England. Deloney recounts the story of "John Winchcombe, in his younger years called Jack of Newbury," an early sixteenth-century apprentice in the company of weavers. Courted by the wife of his former master, he marries her and thereby becomes wealthy; spends time in the court of Henry VIII and challenges Cardinal Wolsey; and becomes embroiled in a range of comic situations. Amusing as it is, the work also has a serious message: as Peter Herman puts it in his introduction to the volume, "the truly valuable subjects are not the nobility, but the merchant class, people who either labor or provide the opportunity for labor. Industry is the nation's strength, not chivalry. And women are to be respected, not used and then discarded." Set in the early sixteenth century Jack of Newbury resonated powerfully with readers in the 1590s-an era of economic crisis, high unemployment, and great suffering, for all its literary flowering-and was enormously popular. The range of contextual materials included with this edition help to set it in the broader context of its economic and political as well as literary culture.

Royal Poetrie is the first book to address the significance of a distinctive body of verse from the English Renaissance poems produced by the Tudor-Stuart monarchs Henry VIII, Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, and James VI/I. Not surprisingly, Henry VIII is no John Donne, but the unique political and poetic complications raised by royal endeavors at authorship imbue this literature with special interest.

Peter C. Herman is particularly intrigued by how the monarchs' poems express and extend their power and control. Monarchs turned to verse especially at moments when they considered their positions insecure or when they were seeking to aggregate more power to themselves. Far from reflecting absolute authority, monarchic verse often reveals the need for authority to defend itself against considerable, effective opposition that was often close at hand.

In monarchic verse, Herman argues, one can see monarchs asserting their significance and appropriating images of royalty to enhance their power and their position. Sometimes, as in the cases of Henry and Elizabeth, they are successful; sometimes, as for James, they are not. For Mary Stuart, the results were disastrous. Herman devotes a chapter each to the poetic endeavors of Henry VIII, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, and James VI/I. His introduction addresses the tradition of monarchic verse in England and on the continent as well as the textual issues presented by these texts. A brief postscript examines the verses that circulated under Charles I's name after his execution. In an argument enhanced by carefully chosen illustrations, Herman places monarchic verse within the visual and other cultural traditions of the day."

This second edition of "Approaches to Teaching Milton's" Paradise Lost addresses Milton in the light of the digital age, new critical approaches to his poem, and his continued presence in contemporary culture. It aims to help instructors enliven the teaching of "Paradise Lost" and address the challenges presented to students by the poem--the early modern syntax and vocabulary, the political and theological contexts, and the abounding classical references.

The first part of the volume, "Materials," evaluates the many available editions of the poem, points to relevant reference works, recommends additional reading, and outlines useful audiovisual and online aids for teaching Milton's epic poem. The essays in the second part, "Approaches," are grouped by several themes: literary and historical contexts, characters, poetics, critical approaches, classrooms, and performance. The essays cover epic conventions and literary and biblical allusions, new approaches such as ecocriticism and masculinity studies, and reading Milton on the Web, among other topics.

Milton's shorter poetry and prose can be challenging to teach, but they reward instructors and students many times over: they introduce in compact, accessible form the themes and difficult syntax of Paradise Lost, expand and comment on the epic and on one another, and provide students ideal training in close reading. The essays in this volume constitute a road map for exploring the most frequently taught of Milton's shorter works-"Lycidas," the Nativity Ode, Comus, Samson Agonistes, Areopagitica, and The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce-as well as the sonnets, Paradise Regained, The Reason of Church Government, and The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, among others. The contributors demonstrate ways of incorporating Milton's shorter works into a range of classrooms, from survey courses to Milton seminars; list specific tools to make the works' relevance and aesthetic pleasures available to a wide variety of student populations; and offer a wealth of techniques for helping students navigate Milton's demanding style and complicated historical context. Like all volumes in the Approaches series, this collection includes a convenient survey of original and supplementary materials and a comprehensive array of classroom tactics. Three sections of essays provide general approaches to the poetry and prose, through biography, genre, literary and political history, and other methodologies. The fourth section addresses the teaching of individual poems, and the final section articulates ways into specific prose works.

This book explores how recent changes in university culture and administration have affected and will continue to affect the "next generation" of literary critics. How have these recent shifts in material conditions inflected the criticism, sense of the profession, and modes of scholarship of this next generation? If the sixties produced "Theory", then what have the eighties and nineties produced? How has the corporatization of the academy affected hiring practices, and how will it shape the careers of those hired? What will be the impact of computers, the internet, and the various proposed "virtual" universities? In addressing these and other questions, the book marks a profound moment of institutional crisis, and will serve as a resource to all who are concerned with the future direction of literary studies and of higher education in general.

Historicizing Theory provides the first serious examination of contemporary theory in relation to the various twentieth-century historical and political contexts out of which it emerged. Theory--a broad category that is often used to encompass theoretical approaches as varied as cleconstruction, New Historicism, and post colonialism--has often been derided as a mere "relic" of the 1960s. In order to move beyond such a simplistic assessment, the essays in this volume examine such important figures as Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt, and Edward Said, situating their work in a variety of contexts inside and outside of the 1960s, including World War 11, the Holocaust, the Algerian civil war, and the canon wars of the 1980s. In bringing us face-to-face with the history of theory, "Historicizing Theory recuperates history for theory and asks us to confront some of the central issues and problems in literary studies today.