Critical Approaches to Six Major English Works


Book Description

In each of these six essays, treating the greatest literary accomplishments of medieval and renaissance England, the author is concerned with the literary work as a whole and with a survey of recent critical approaches to it. Beowulf, by R. E. Kaske; The Canterbury Tales, by Richard L. Hoffman; Le Morte Darthur, by Larry D. Benson; The Faerie Queen, by A. C. Ham­ilton, King Lear, by Ernest William Talbert; and Paradise Lost, by Irene Samuel.




Shakespeare Studies Today


Book Description

The Romantics invented Shakespeare studies, and in losing contact with our origins, we have not been able to develop an adequate alternative foundation on which to build our work. This book asserts that among Shakespeareans at present, the level of conviction required to sustain a healthy critical practice is problematically if not dangerously low, and the qualities which the Romantics valued in an engagement with Shakespeare are either ignored these days or fundamentally misunderstood.




Samuel Johnson


Book Description




Ethnic and Racial Studies Today


Book Description

This important collection addresses recent developments in the teaching, studying and presentation of race across many disciplines, including sociology, politics, social geography, cultural studies and philosophy. Drawing on the latest research in all these areas, the authors provide a comprehensive account of key controversies and debates and pinpoint new directions in research and scholarship that are likely to shape the study of race and ethnicity well into the next century.




Shakespeare's History Plays


Book Description

Shakespeare's History Plays boldly moves criticism of Shakespeare's history plays beyond anti-humanist theoretical approaches. This important intervention in the critical and theoretical discourse of Shakespeare studies summarises, evaluates and ultimately calls time on the mode of criticism that has prevailed in Shakespeare studies over the past thirty years. It heralds a new, more dynamic way of reading Shakespeare as a supremely intelligent and creative political thinker, whose history plays address and illuminate the very questions with which cultural historicists have been so preoccupied since the 1980s. In providing bold and original readings of the first and second tetralogies (Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II and Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2), the book reignites old debates and re-energises recent bids to humanise Shakespeare and to restore agency to the individual in the critical readings of his plays




Shakespeare's Moral Compass


Book Description

Examines the aesthetics, concepts and politics of chaotic and obscured moving images.




English Literature, 1660-1800


Book Description

The Philological Quarterly's annual bibliographies of modern studies in English neoclassical literature, published originally from 1961 to 1970, are reproduced in two volumes. Readers will find the same features that distinguished earlier compilations in the series: inclusive listing of significant works published in each year (including sections on the historical and cultural background as well as literature), authoritative reviews of important works, critical comments, and a full index that is in itself an indispensable reference tool. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




Reconciling Synchrony, Diachrony and Usage in Verb Number Agreement with Complex Collective Subjects


Book Description

This book uses corpus-based methodologies to investigate the wide variety of factors behind verb number agreement with complex collective noun phrases in English. The literature on collective nouns and their agreement patterns spans an array of disciplines and approaches. However, little of the research conducted to date has focused on the influence of of-dependents on verb number with relational collective nouns, as in examples such as a bunch of or a group of. Drawing on data from two case studies – one based on the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), and the other on the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) – Fernández-Pena uses statistical modelling to unpack the different morphological, syntactic, semantic and lexical dimensions of the variables affecting verb number agreement with complex collective noun phrases in English. This multidimensional analysis of the significance of of-dependents in the patterning and contemporary usage of collective nouns offers new insight into and understanding of both synchronic variation and diachronic change. This book is an essential read for scholars of English language variation and change, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, and usage-based approaches to the study of language.