Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Renaissance

This study contends that folly is of fundamental importance to the implicit philosophical vision of Shakespeare s drama. The discourse of folly s wordplay, jubilant ironies, and vertiginous paradoxes furnish Shakespeare with a way of understanding that lays bare the hypocrisies and absurdities of the serious world. Like Erasmus, More, and Montaigne before him, Shakespeare employs folly as a mode of understanding that does not arrogantly insist upon the veracity of its own claims a fool s truth, after all, is spoken by a fool. Yet, as this study demonstrates, Shakespearean folly is not the...

This book asks new questions about how and why Shakespeare engages with source material, and about what should be counted as sources in Shakespeare studies. The essays demonstrate that source study remains an indispensable mode of inquiry for understanding Shakespeare, his authorship and audiences, and early modern gender, racial, and class relations, as well as for considering how new technologies have and will continue to redefine our understanding of the materials Shakespeare used to compose his plays. Although source study has been used in the past to construct a conservative view of...

First published in 1986, this title examines a set of English Renaissance texts by Shakespeare, Spenser, Herbert, Marvell and Milton, within the theoretic framework of postmodern thought. Following an opening chapter that argues for the value of this conjunction as a way of understanding literary history, subsequent chapters draw upon Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of photocentrism and Jacques Lacan's analysis of the agency of the letter to offer fully theorized readings. Throughout, there is a sustained concern with the transformations of such Ovidian figures as Narcissus and Echo,...

This collection of essays by scholars from Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Taiwan covers a wide range of topics about Ralegh's diversified career and achievements. Some of the essays shed light on less familiar facets such as Ralegh as a father and as he is represented in paintings, statues, and in movies; others re-examine him as poet, historian, as a controversial figure in Ireland during Elizabeth's reign, and look at his complex relationship with and patronage of Edmund Spenser. A recurrent topic is the Hatfield Manuscript in Ralegh's handwriting, which contains his long,...

The final two volumes in the CWE contain an edition and translation of Erasmus's poetry. For Erasmus scholars this work affords the first opportunity to evaluate and analyse Erasmus' poems in English. And for those interested in Renaissance and Reformation poetry in general, these offer an intriguing look at the work of one of the towering figures of the period writing in a genre that was, for him, unusual.

The annotations include a path-breaking commentary piece by Harry Vredeveld on Erasmus' most famous poem, Poem on the Trouble of Old Age.' Another important feature is the...

How does a woman become a whore? What are the discursive dynamics making a woman a whore? And, more importantly, what are the discursive mechanics of unmaking? In Women and Shakespeare s Cuckoldry Plays: Shifting Narratives of Marital Betrayal, Cristina Leon Alfar pursues these questions to tease out familiar cultural stories about female sexuality that recur in the form of a slander narrative throughout William Shakespeare s work. She argues that the plays stage a structure of accusation and defense that unravels the authority of husbands to make and unmake wives. While men s...

hough law and satire share essential elements -- both aim to correct individual vice, to promote justice, and to claim authority amid competing perspectives -- their commonality has gone largely unexplored by both legal theorists and literary critics. Gregory Kneidel, in this thoroughly original work, finds that just such an exploration leads to fascinating new insights for both fields of study. Reversing the more common association of satire with illegality, especially with libel, Kneidel...

Private Lives Made Public: The Invention of Biography in Early Modern England contributes an incisive, fresh take on "life-writing"--a catch-all label that, in contemporary discourse, encompasses...