This book investigates how Syon Abbey responded to the religious turbulence of the 1520s and 1530s. It examines the eleven books three brothers - William Bonde, John Fewterer and Richard Whitford - had printed during this period and argues that the Bridgettines used vernacular printing to engage with religious and political developments that threatened their understanding of orthodox faith. Through these works - and their some twenty-six editions - the Abbey presented itself as part of the vanguard of the Church, fighting heterodoxy with a three-fold commitment to reformed spiritual...

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 has commonly been thought to represent a return to political stability and religious consensus following the tumultuous civil wars and the Commonwealth period. However, by analysing underground texts from 1660 to 1670, Stephen Bardle provides a new literary historical narrative of what was in fact one of the most tumultuous periods in English history. This new study contributes to an on-going historical re-evaluation of the Restoration period, a time when terrible plague, the Great Fire of London, and a brutal war against the Dutch quickly undermined...

How are a reader's perceptions of a plot impacted by its presentation through textual clues rather than explicit narration and why would an author choose this comparatively indirect mode of narration? Conspicuous Silences answers these questions by examining Victorian novels in which pivotal events are left inexplicit for hundreds of pages at a time, but are nonetheless evident to the reader. The clarity with which readers understand these inexplicit plot lines is evidenced by their ability to follow the progression of narratives that rely heavily on the inexplicit content being...

Committed Styles offers a new understanding of the politicized literature of the 1930s and its relationship to modernism. It reclaims a central body of literary and critical works for modernist studies, offering in-depth readings of texts by T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards, as well as by key left-wing authors including William Empson, David Gascoyne, Charles Madge, Humphrey Jennings, and Edward Upward. Building on substantial new archival research, Benjamin Kohlmann explores the deep tensions between modernist experimentation and political vision that lie at the heart of these works....

Shakespeare's Women and the Fin de Siecle illuminates the most iconoclastic performances of Shakespeare's heroines in late Victorian theatre, through the celebrity, commentary, and wider careers of the actresses who played them. By bringing together fin-de-siecle performances of Shakespeare and contemporary Victorian drama for the first time, this book illuminates the vital ways in which fin-de-siecle Shakespeare and contemporary Victorian theatre culture conditioned each other.

Actresses' movements between Shakespeare and fin-de-siecle roles reveal the...

At the outbreak of the Second World War Vladimir Nabokov stood on the brink of losing everything all over again. The reputation he had built as the pre-eminent Russian novelist in exile was imperilled. In Nabokov and his Books, Duncan White shows how Nabokov went to America and not only reinvented himself as an American writer but also used the success of Lolita to rescue those Russian books that had been threatened by obscurity. Using previously unpublished and neglected material, White tells the story of Nabokov the professional writer and how he sought to balance his late...

This volume examines how literature was central to the debates about royal succession and political culture of the early eighteenth century. It reshapes our understanding of writers such as Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, and Joseph Addison, as well as our understanding of political, literary, and material cultures of the time.

Draws on the unpublished writings of Charles Olson and situates his work in the context of contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, and music to tell the story of how American poets and artists reimagined art and literature for the post-war world.