Designed to complement DeMaria's textbook British Literature 1640-1789: An Anthology, this critical reader contains seventeen essays by sixteen contemporary literary critics and covers the full range of works printed in the anthology. All the essays were first published within the last ten years, and they represent current thinking about the literature in this chronological span. The Reader will help students and teachers of the period find new approaches to central canonical works, but it also provides introductions to several of the less well known writers included in DeMaria's anthology. Most of the essays in the reader articulate readings of important individual works while situating those works in historical contexts that provide background for understanding other writings of the period. Many of the essays also relate the contexts under study to larger historical or cultural movements. For example, David Norbrook's essay provides a historically - based reading of Milton's Areopagitica while making a contribution to the history of censorship and the evolution of the public sphere in England. Similarly, Catherine Gallagher's essay on Aphra Behn's Oroonoko explains how blackness of the novella's main character functions in literary terms while providing background. Other essays throw light on such topics as the history of readers and authors; social definitions of sexuality; religious thought; nationhood; and the relations between public politics and the private, gendered self. The critics selected for the reader are all currently very active, and many are young scholars whose work has begun to appear in only the last five or ten years: Sharon Achinstein, Helen Deutsch, George Haggerty, Adam Potkay, Carol Barash, D. N. DeLuna, and Frans De Bruyn join more senior established scholars such as Ruth Perry, Terry Castle, David Perkins, Howard Weinbrot, Claude Rawson, and Thomas Greene.

This "anthology" presents a selection of works that illustrates the traffic between British poetry and classical literature.
Gives readers the classical background they need in order to really appreciate British poetry.
Divided into two halves - the first half presenting a selection of the best British poems, and the second presenting relevant classical works in translation.
Notes and introductions highlight the connections between British works and their classical forebears.

This concise collection of poetry from 1660-1789 offers readers authoritative texts of the central works of the age.
Provides readers with authoritative texts of key poems from 1660-1789.
Focuses on those works most widely taught at schools and universities.
Offers students an accessible digest of the poetry of the period.
Demonstrates the range of poetry written between the restoration of the monarchy and the beginnings of the Romantic movement.

In this major revision of The Life of Samuel Johnson, Robert DeMaria makes a compelling claim for the attention of a new generation of Johnson's readers and admirers.Even as a child Johnson relied on his extraordinary powers of mind to distinguish himself from his family and to propel him into broader intellectual and social milieux. His hero was Joseph Scaliger and he dreamt of becoming a Latin scholar-poet, a citizen like Scaliger of the European republic of letters. His efforts and talents were remarkable. But financial and personal circumstances prevented him achieving his early dreams. Robert DeMaria describes his subject in terms of Johnson's own personal and professional hopes for himself and gets closer to the historical man than any previous study of the complete life and works.

This "anthology" presents a selection of works that illustrates the traffic between British poetry and classical literature.
Gives readers the classical background they need in order to really appreciate British poetry.
Divided into two halves - the first half presenting a selection of the best British poems, and the second presenting relevant classical works in translation.
Notes and introductions highlight the connections between British works and their classical forebears.