This engaging survey of important works spanning the lives of Petrarch (1304-1374) to Shakespeare (1564-1616) reveals the depth of thought and the diversity of expression that characterized the Renaissance. The author examines poetry, philosophical treatises, essays, letters, novels, comedies, and dramas, documenting the unique array of evolving ......
Vahni Capildeo, author of Measures of Expatriation (Forward Prize, 2016), returns with her third Carcanet collection, Skin Can Hold. The collection marks an experimental departure for a traditionally pen-and-paper poet as she explores embodied practice—theatre, dance, and experimental performance.
For years scholars and others have been trying to out Shakespeare as an ardent Calvinist, a crypto-Catholic, a Puritan-baiter, a secularist, or a devotee of some hybrid faith. In Religion Around Shakespeare, Peter Kaufman sets aside such speculation in favor of considering the historical and religious context surrounding his work. ......
There are sons who grow up unhappily believing that no matter what they do, they cannot please their fathers. These are the ''loser sons,'' a group of historical men as varied as President George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, and Mohammed Atta. Their names quickly illustrate that not only are their problems serious, but they also make serious problems ......
A preeminent Orwell scholar's lifetime of work on the icon of modern literature.This remarkable volume collects, for the first time, essays representing more than four decades of scholarship by one of the world's leading authorities on George Orwell. In clear, energetic prose that exemplifies his indefatigable attention to Orwell's life work, ......
This fascinating compendium explains the most unusual, obscure, and curious words and expressions from vintage blues music. Utilizing both documentary evidence and invaluable interviews with a number of now-deceased musicians from the 1920s and '30s, blues scholar Stephen Calt unravels the nuances of more than twelve hundred idioms and proper or ......
Drawn from Agnes Agboton's two Spanish collections in a single volume for the first time ever, Voice of the Two Shores was originally written in Gun, a language of Benin, the musicality of which is faithfully reproduced through the net of two translations. Many of the poems are rooted in Benin, while others confront the absence of the living ......
Although we are currently bombarded with numerous health scares—AIDS, West Nile virus, avian flu, and the recent swine flu, just to name a few that now fill our media reports and instill dread in the population—we can scarcely imagine the outlook that dominated the mindset of those who endured the bubonic plague in England during ......