The mystery plays of medieval England have traditionally been analysed in ways which centre on the texts and their religious significance. Hans-Jurgen Diller's major study, first published in German, seeks to recover their dramatic potential by focusing on the function of language in conventional modes of speech, prayer, address and dialogue. He looks at speech and dramatic form in the plays to reveal new insights concerning spatial and temporal orientation, the expression of emotions, and the relationships between characters on stage, between actor and audience, and between the dramatic...

Hermann Fischer's lively and original study of Romantic verse narrative traces the origins and development of this poetic form in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It brings together the longer epic verse tales of Scott, Byron and Southey and the more lyrical forms of Romantic narrative poetry in the revealing but neglected context of the genre and its history. Professor Fischer addresses the question of genre from both theoretical and historical viewpoints. His study illuminates many areas of Romantic literature, including the role of the medieval revival and the decline of...

This 1982 book was the first major and comprehensive survey of mirror-imagery to be found in medieval book-titles and English literature from the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. Working within the tradition of the historical study of metaphor as developed by E. R. Curtius, Professor Grabes not only traces the shifting historical usages of the mirror (as the metaphor's 'vehicle') but also studies the metaphor's structural function in individual works. At the same time, the author addresses himself to the aesthetic problem of originality in literature, and, by investigating...