Since its launch in 1987, Textual Practice has established itself as a leading journal of radical literary theory. Naturally, new approaches to literary texts are a major feature, but in exploring apparently discrete areas such as philosophy, history, law, science, architecture, gender and media studies, this publication pays no heed to traditional academic boundaries. Textual Practice is available both on subscription and from bookstores.

Shakespeare in the Present is a stunning collection of essays by Terence Hawkes, which engage with, explain, and explore 'presentism'. Presentism is a critical manoeuvre which uses relevant aspects of the contemporary as a crucial trigger for its investigations. It deliberately begins with the material present and lets that set the interrogative agenda. This book suggests ways in which its principles may be applied to aspects of Shakespeare's plays.
Hawkes concentrates on two main areas in which Presentism impacts on the study of Shakespeare. The first is the concept of...

Shakespeare in the Present is a stunning collection of essays by Terence Hawkes, which engage with, explain, and explore 'presentism'. Presentism is a critical manoeuvre which uses relevant aspects of the contemporary as a crucial trigger for its investigations. It deliberately begins with the material present and lets that set the interrogative agenda. This book suggests ways in which its principles may be applied to aspects of Shakespeare's plays.
Hawkes concentrates on two main areas in which Presentism impacts on the study of Shakespeare. The first is the concept of...

There are many 'Shakespeares', argue the contributors to this, the second volume of Alternative Shakespeares and the different versions emerge in a wide variety of cultural contexts: race, gender, sexuality and politics amongst others. Alternative Shakespeares: Volume 2 consists of entirely new essays by some of the world's leading Shakespearean critics. The topics covered include: Sexuality and Gender, Language and Power, Textualilty and Printing, Race and Shakespeare's Britain, New Historicist Criticism and the 'Gaze' of the Audience. In abandoning the search for any final and definitive...

This collection of essays focuses on the ways in which our society 'processes' Shakespeare and the purposes for which this seems to be done.

In the seven plays on which the book concentrates, Terence Hawkes finds Shakespeare investigating the operation of two opposed forms of reason, and constructing dramatic metaphors such as the opposition between appearance and reality, or that

Presentist Shakespeares is the first extended study of the principles and practice of 'presentism', a critical movement that takes account of the never-ending dialogue between past and present.

In this bold and consistently thought-provoking collection of presentist readings, the contributors:

• argue that the ironies generated by our involvement in time are a fruitful, necessary and an unavoidable aspect of any text's being, and that presentism allows us to engage with them more fully and productively
• demonstrate how these ironies can function as...

'Mr Hawkes is a good critic, oriented towards history of ideas. He operates on the formula that Shakespeare was interested in the available distinctions between discursive and intuitive reason, and disliked a growing tendency for the first to be thought of as manly and the second effeminate. One sees how this action-contemplation polarity works, in Hamlet for instance, and Mr Hawkes thinks the kind of choices forced on tragic heroes can be better understood in terms of it.' Frank Kermode, New Statesman. In the seven plays on which the book concentrates, Terence Hawkes finds Shakespeare...