This anthology recovers a tradition of writing to which some of the greatest medieval and Renaissance poets--women as well as men--contributed. Centering on Shakespeare's neglected A Lovers Complaint, it includes "female"-voiced lyrics, chronicle poems and fictional letters by a range of authors from Chaucer to Aphra Behn and Henry Carey. In his scholarly introduction, Kerrigan outlines the development of 'female complaint', indicates how cultural pressure shaped it, and argues that the time is ripe for a reevaluation of this literary kind. Shedding new light on Shakespeare and the...

John Kerrigan is one of the foremost critics of English literature. This richly informed collection brings together his essays on such major figures as Sir Philip Sidney and Milton, but also less celebrated writers, including Thomas Carew and, in a new piece, William Drummond, to reconfigure the familiar and help extend the canon. Shakespeare looms large in this volume and his poems, plays and influence on Keats, are the subject of half the book.

This richly informed collection brings together his essays on such major figures as Sir Philip Sidney and Milton, but also less celebrated writers, including Thomas Carew and, in a new piece, William Drummond, to reconfigure the familiar and help extend the canon. Shakespeare looms large in this volume and his poems, plays and influence on Keats, are the subject of half the book.

English Comedy brings together well-established scholars and younger critics to examine the traditions of comic writing in England, ranging from medieval and Renaissance drama through Romantic poetry to twentieth-century literature and philosophy. All the contributors are colleagues, friends or ex-students of Anne Barton, and the book is published to coincide with the appearance (also from CUP) of her Essays, Mainly Shakespearean.

Seventeenth-century 'English Literature' has long been thought about in narrowly English terms. Archipelagic English corrects this by devolving anglophone writing, showing how much remarkable work was produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and how preoccupied such English authors as Shakespeare, Milton, and Marvell were with the often fraught interactions between ethnic, religious, and national groups around the British-Irish archipelago. This book transforms our understanding of canonical texts from Macbeth to Defoe's Colonel Jack, but it also shows the significance of a whole series of...

This remarkable, innovative book explores the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges and the other utterances and acts by which characters commit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come. In early modern England, such binding language was everywhere. Oaths of office, marriage vows, legal bonds, and casual, everyday profanity gave shape and texture to life. The proper use of such language, and the extent of its power to bind, was argued over by lawyers, religious writers, and satirists, and these debates inform literature and drama....

Shakespeare's Binding Language is an innovative, substantial but highly readable study exploring the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges and the other verbal and performative acts by which characters commit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come.