Many factors contributed to the Protestant Reformation, but one of the most significant was the debate over the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In fact, Martin Luther argued that justification is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. This comprehensive volume of 26 essays from a host of scholars explores the doctrine of justification from the lenses of history, the Bible, theology, and pastoral practice—revealing the enduring significance of this pillar of Protestant ...

This volume documents the full tradition of criticism of The Merchant of Venice ranging from 1775 to 1939.The Merchant of Venice has always been regarded as one of Shakespeare's most interesting plays, though it poses many challenges due to what is seen as its inherent anti-Semitism. Before the 19th century critical reaction is relatively fragmentary, but between then and the late 20th century the critical tradition reveals the power of the play t...

This volume documents the reception and interpretation of Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear by critics, editors and general readers from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. Following an introduction which provides an historical account of the play's critical reception from the earliest times to the present day, the volume presents a selection of original documents, together with contextual head notes and biographical sketches of the authors and a rationale for their selection...

"I cannot think of a greater gift to the church than a biblically rooted devotional series that spans the entire New Testament." --R. Albert Mohler, President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary"Who do you say that I am?" --Mark 8:29Jesus asked his disciples this question at the midpoint of Mark's Gospel--and no question is more important. The Gospel of Mark answers it by presenting Jesus as the king who suffered and gave hi...

Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England is an annual volume committed to the publication of essays and reviews related to English drama and theater history to 1642. An internationally recognized board of scholars oversees the publication of MaRDiE. Readers who wish to deepen their understanding of early drama will find that the journal publishes wide-ranging discussions not only of plays and early performance history, but of topics pertaining to cultural history, as wel...

First published in 2004, David George's majestic compendium of criticism relating to Shakespeare's Coriolanus was recognised as a major contribution to teaching and scholarship on the play. This new edition has been updated with a new supplementary introduction by the author tracing criticism on the play since that first publication, including materialist, psychoanalytic and feminist readings, as well as further readings of the play's politics.As with all titles in the ser...

This new volume in the Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition series increases our knowledge of how Antony and Cleopatra has been received and understood by critics, editors and general readers. The volume provides, in separate sections, both critical opinions about the play across the centuries and an evaluation of their positions within and their impact on the reception of the play. The chronological arrangement of the text-excerpts engages the readers in a direct and unbiased dial...

The purpose of this book is to honor the scholarly legacy of Charles R. Forker with a series of essays that address the problem of literary influence in original ways and from a variety of perspectives. The emphasis throughout is on the sort of careful, exhaustive, evidence-based scholarship to which Forker dedicated his entire professional life. Although wide-ranging and various by design, the essays in this book never lose sight of three discrete yet overlapping areas of literary inquiry...

This new volume in the Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition increases our knowledge of how Twelfth Night was received and understood by critics, editors and general readers. The volume offers, in separate sections, both critical opinions about the play across the centuries and an evaluation of their positions within and their impact on the reception of the play. The volume features criticism from key literary figures such as Thomas De Quincey, Charles Knight, Mary Cowden C...

Returning to Shakespeare addresses two broad areas of Shakespeare criticism: the unity of form and meaning, and the history of the plays’ reception. Originally published in 1989, the collection represents the best of Brian Vickers’ work from the previous fifteen years, in a revised and expanded form.The first part of the book focuses on the connection between a work’s structural or formal properties and our experience of it. A new study of the Sonnets shows how pe...

King Lear exists in two different texts: the Quarto (1608) and the Folio (1623). Because each supplies passages missing in the other, for over 200 years editors combined the two to form a single text, the basis for all modern productions. Then in the 1980s a group of influential scholars argued that the two texts represent different versions of King Lear, that Shakespeare revised his play in light of theatrical performance. The two-text theory has since hardened into orth...

First published in 1968. This re-issues the revised edition of 1979.The Artistry of Shakespeare's Prose is the first detailed study of the use of prose in the plays. It begins by defining the different dramatic and emotional functions which Shakespeare gave to prose and verse, and proceeds to analyse the recurrent stylistic devices used in his prose. The general and particular application of prose is then studied through all the plays, in roughly chronological order.