For the New Testament and the Apocrypha, the introductions and annotations by Austin Busch and Gerald Hammond provide necessary historical and cultural background, while illuminating the complexity of the original texts. Supporting materials are divided into five sections. "Historical Contexts" excerpts Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources, such as Josephus, Philo, Tacitus, Pliny, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Selections from Papias, Marcion, and Valentinus, among others, provide insight into the diversity of early Christianity. "Exegesis" explores classic New Testament commentary from Origen and...

"Contexts" presents a wealth of materials chosen by the editors to enrich the reader's understanding of these canonical stories, including a map of the landscape of the conjure tales, Chesnutt's journal entry as he began writing fiction of the South, as well as writings by Chesnutt, William Wells Brown, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, among others, on the stories' central motifs--folklore, superstition, voodoo, race, and social identity in the South following the Civil War "Criticism" is divided into two parts. "Early Criticism" collects critical notices forThe Conjure Woman that suggest...

"Sources and Contexts" includes, in its entirety, Shakespeare's primary source for the play--Thomas Lodge's popular prose romance Rosalynde (1590). Reading Shakespeare's play with (and against) Lodge's romance reveals striking similarities and fascinating differences, both large and small. An array of other readings focuses on the central areas of gender and ecology and includes works by Michel de Montaigne, Sir Thomas More, Thomas Bastard, George Gascoygne, and William Prynne A rich "Criticism" section includes twenty-one commentaries onAs You Like It spanning four centuries....

"Sources and Contexts" presents possible sources as well as analogues toJulius Caesar, an account of Shakespeare's understanding of and approach to Roman history, and Ernest Schanzer's study of the narrative challenges posed by the play. "Criticism" includes early commentary--by, among others, Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, and Harley Granville-Barker--onJulius Caesar as well as modern interpretations. Among these are John W. Velz on role-playing in Julius Caesar; Jan H. Blits on Caesar's ambiguous end; Paul A. Cantor on rhetoric, poetry and the Roman republic;...

When Georg Buchner died in 1837 at the age of twenty-three, he left behind a small and heterogenous body of work, most of it unpublished: three plays, a novella, a political pamphlet, a dissertation, medical lectures, and letters. Matthew Wilson Smith has newly translated Buchner's introduction toOn Cranial Nerves. Each text is accompanied by explanatory annotations. The editor's introduction examines the complexities of Buchner's short life and how they informed his writing. The volume also contains ten illustrations. "Contexts" includes Buchner's correspondence with the people who...

The Norton Critical Edition text is based on the 1901 first edition. It is accompanied by a note on the text, Werner Sollors's insightful introduction, explanatory annotations, and twenty-four photographs and illustrations "Contexts" connects the novel to the historical events in Wilmington and includes a wealth of newspaper articles, editorials, and biographical sketches of the central players The account of riot instigator Alfred Moore Waddell, published just weeks after the event, is reprinted, along with three rarely seen letters: W. E. B. Du Bois's and Booker T. Washington's comments on...

"Sources and Contexts" unearths a wealth of original material about the environment the works were produced in and the real-life people who inspired them. The three sections, "On Coquetry," "The Life and Death of Elizabeth Whitman," and "The Nineteenth-Century Legacy," include new and corrected transcriptions of Whitman's letters to Ruth and Joel Barlow, an inventory of items found at Whitman's room at her death, popular representations of Elizabeth Whitman, and unauthorized sequels toThe Coquette. Seven illustrations, including three of Eliza Wharton, are included to enrich the...

"Alternative Narratives and Sequels" enriches the reader's understanding of and appreciation for Cabeza de Vaca's chronicle, which can be read both as historical record and as fiction (Cabeza de Vaca having written his account years after the events took place). Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdez'sGeneral and Natural History of the Indies (1535) provides a different account of the same journey, while sequels can be found in a 1539 letter from the Viceroy of New Spain to the Emperor and in Fray Marcos de Niza's Relacion on the Discovery of the Kingdom of Cibola (1539). The...

"Contemporary Reception," new to the Third Edition, considers the broad range of reactions to Faulkner's extraordinary novel on publication. Michael Gorra's headnote sets the stage for assessments by Evelyn Scott, Henry Nash Smith, Clifton P. Fadiman, Dudley Fitts, Richard Hughes, and Edward Crickmay. New materials by Faulkner ("The Writer and His Work") include letters to Malcolm Cowley aboutThe Portable Faulkner and Faulkner's Nobel Prize for Literature address. "Cultural and Historical Contexts" begins with Michael Gorra's insightful headnote, which is followed by seven seminal...

The Duchess of Malfi's themes of love, loyalty, and betrayal have resonated through the centuries, making this a perennially popular play with audiences and readers alike. This volume includes a generous selection of supporting materials, among them Webster's likely sources for the play (William Painter, George Whetstone, Simon Goulart, and Thomas Beard) as well as related works by Webster and George Wither on widows, funerals, and memorializing death. A generous selection from Mark H. Curtis's classic essay, "The Alienated Intellectuals of Early Stuart England," tells readers as...