Reading a wide range of early modern authors and exploring their cultural-historical, philosophical and scientific contexts, Early Modern Writing and the Privatization of Experience examines the shift in focus from reliance on shared experience to placing of trust in individualized experience which occurs in the writing and culture of the period. Nick Davis contends that much of the era's literary production participates significantly in this broad cultural movement.Coveri...

'As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream.' So begins one of the best-loved and most widely read books in English literature.

This is the first dictionary of symbols to be based on literature, rather than 'universal' psychological archetypes or myths. It explains and illustrates the literary symbols that we all frequently encounter (such as swan, rose, moon, gold), and gives hundreds of cross-references and quotations. The dictionary concentrates on English literature, but its entries range widely from the Bible and classical authors to the twentieth century, taking in American and European literatures. For this ...

INTRODUCTION BY GERMAINE GREERShakespeare's sonnets are lyrical, haunting, beautiful and often breath-taking, representing one of the finest bodies of poetry ever penned. They demonstrate the writer's skill in capturing the full range of human emotions within a carefully prescribed form and creating something unique in every one. Some are familiar - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? - others unexpected, but together they form an extraordinary meditation on the nature...

The renaissance period is long gone but its influence can still be felt up until the present times. Reading the contents of this book, your child will understand more about the period and why Florence, Italy seems to be the hub of the most powerful people during this era. Be prepared for some mind-blowing questions only your child can think of. Get a copy today!

The White Devil is one of the most violent and most fascinating plays in English theatrical history. It is also a notoriously challenging work; this volume offers a practical, accessible and thought-provoking guide to the play, surveying its major themes and critical reception. It also provides a detailed and up-to-date history of the play's performance, beginning with its first staging in 1611 staging and ending with the RSC's 2014 revival. Moving through to four new critical ess...

A truly groundbreaking collaboration of original theatre history with exciting literary criticism, Shakespeare in Parts is the first book fully to explore the original form in which Shakespeare's drama overwhelmingly circulated. This was not the full play-text; it was not the public performance. It was the actor's part, consisting of the bare cues and speeches of each individual role. With group rehearsals rare or non-existent, the cued part alone had to furnish the actor with his...

Many scholars have been calling for a new edition of Sir John Harington's Epigrams. Gerard Kilroy, using the three manuscripts arranged and revised by the author, offers the first complete text in print of Harington's four hundred Epigrams, uncovers Harington's elaborate design of forty theological decades, and restores the emblems and political elegies that Harington uses to frame his complete collection and define its serious purpose.

Troubled politically and personally, Wordsworth and Coleridge turned in 1797 to the London stage. Their tragedies, The Borderers and Osorio, were set in medieval Britain and early modern Spain to avoid the Lord Chamberlain's censorship. Drury Lane rejected both, but fifteen years later Coleridge's revision, Remorse, had spectacular success there, inspiring Shelley's 1819 Roman tragedy, The Cenci, aimed for Covent Garden. Reeve Parker makes a striking case for the power of these intertwined...

Bringing together scholars from literature and the history of ideas, Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture explores new ways of negotiating the boundaries between cognitive and bodily models of emotion, and between different versions of the will as active or passive. In the process, it juxtaposes the historical formation of such ideas with contemporary philosophical debates. It frames a dialogue between rhetoric and medicine, politics and religion, in order to examine the relat...

Coleridge has been perceived as the youthful author of a few brilliant poems. This study argues that his poetry is actually a continuous process of experimentation and provides a new perspective on both familiar and unfamiliar poems, as well as the relation between Coleridge's poetry and philosophical thinking.

Who was Jonathan Swift? Bruce Arnold's provocative book examines this enigmatic figure in the light of his relationships – with his lover Esther Vanhomrigh ('Vanessa'), his ward Esther Johnston ('Stella'), and his many great male friends: Congreve, Temple, Bolingbroke, Harley, Pope, Addison, Thomas Sheridan, and others. Though often caricatured as a bitter misanthrope, Swift can only be properly understood if we recognize his love of humanity and his capacity for friendship. Arnold traces ...