This volume of specially commissioned essays contains studies of O'Neill's life, his intellectual and creative forebears, and his relation to the theatrical world of his creative period, 1916-1942. Also included are descriptions of the O'Neill canon and its production history on stage and screen, and a series of essays on "special topics" related to the playwright. One of the essays speaks for those who are critical of O'Neill's work, and the volume concludes with an essay on O'Neill criticism containing a select bibliography of full-length studies of the playwright's work.

This Companion presents fifteen original and engaging essays by leading scholars on one of the most influential genres of Western literature. Essays on the origins of romance in French and English courts are complemented by articles that trace the transmission and evolution of these stories throughout Europe. The volume provides a clear introduction for students and fresh perspectives for scholars on topics ranging from manuscripts to gender roles in chivalry and courtly love. An introduction, a chronology and a bibliography of texts and translations complete this lively, useful overview.

This volume offers an account of English literary culture in one of its most volatile moments, when literature was enmeshed with the extremes of social, political and sexual experience. Newly-commissioned essays make use of current critical perspectives in order to offer new insight into the literature of Restoration and early eighteenth-century England in all its variety, from vitriolic satire to heroic verse. The volume's chronologies and select bibliographies will guide the reader through texts and events, while the fourteen essays commissioned for this Companion will allow us to read the...

The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw is an indispensable guide to one of the most influential and important dramatists of the theater. The volume offers a broad-ranging study of Shaw with essays by a team of leading scholars. The Companion covers all aspects of Shaw's drama, focusing both on the political and theatrical context, while the extensive illustrations showcase productions from the Shaw Festival in Canada. In addition to situating Shaw's work in its own time, the Companion demonstrates its continuing relevance, and applies some of the newest critical approaches.

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy is an essential introduction to this most enigmatic of writers. These newly commissioned essays from an international team of contributors comprise a general overview of all of Thomas Hardy's work and specific demonstrations of his ideas and literary skills. Individual essays explore Hardy's biography, aesthetics, his famous attachment to Wessex, and the impact on his work of developments in science, religion and philosophy in the late-nineteenth century. The volume also contains a detailed chronology of Hardy's life, and a guide to further reading.

This volume addresses the work of women playwrights throughout the history of the American theater, from the early pioneers to contemporary feminists. Each chapter introduces the reader to the work of one or more playwrights, covering significant writers such as Rachel Crothers, Susan Glaspell, Lillian Hellman, Sophie Treadwell, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Megan Terry, Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy, Wendy Wasserstein, Marsha Norman, Beth Henley and Maria Irene Fornes, in the context of topics such as early comedy and melodrama, feminism and realism, the Harlem Renaissance and...

This Companion addresses the work of women playwrights in Britain throughout the twentieth century. Chapters explore the historical and theatrical contexts in which women have written for the theater and examine the work of individual playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Pam Gems, and Timberlake Wertenbaker. The volume brings together a transatlantic team of feminist theater scholars and practitioners. A chronological section on playwriting from the 1920s to the 1970s is followed by chapters that raise issues of nationality and identity. Later sections question accepted notions of the canon...

This Companion explores the remarkable variety of forms that Shakespeare's life and works have taken over the course of four centuries, ranging from the early modern theatrical marketplace to the age of mass media, and including stage and screen performance, music and the visual arts, the television serial and popular prose fiction. The book asks what happens when Shakespeare is popularized, and when the popular is Shakespeareanized; it queries the factors that determine the definitions of and boundaries between the legitimate and illegitimate, the canonical and the authorized and the...

This 2007 second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Dante is designed to provide an accessible introduction to Dante for students, teachers and general readers. The volume was fully updated and includes three new essays on Dante's works. The suggestions for further reading now include secondary works and translations as well as online resources. The essays cover Dante's early works and their relation to the Commedia, his literary antecedents, both vernacular and classical, biblical and theological influences, the historical and political dimensions of Dante's works, and their reception. In...

The controversies that surround Sylvia Plath's life and work imply that her poems are more read and studied now than ever before. This Companion provides a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the place in twentieth-century culture of Sylvia Plath's poetry, prose, letters and journals. The newly commissioned essays by leading international scholars represent a spectrum of critical perspectives. They pay particular attention to key debates and to well-known texts such as The Bell Jar, while offering original and thought-provoking readings to new as well as more seasoned Plath readers.