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Literary history and criticism

Most popular at the top

  • Beowulfby Anonymous; Burton Raffel

    Penguin Group Inc. 2008; US$ 4.99

    The epic poem Beowulf is the earliest extant poem in a modern European language? reflecting a feudal, newly Christian world of heroes and monsters, blood and victory, life and death. Its beauty, power, and artistry have kept it alive for more than thirteen centuries. more...

  • The Cambridge Companion to John Drydenby Steven N. Zwicker

    Cambridge University Press 2004; US$ 27.00

    John Dryden was one of the great literary figures of the late seventeenth century. This Companion provides a fresh look at the full range of Dryden's work in the context of his time, and includes a chronology of Dryden's life and times and a guide to further reading. more...

  • Macbethby William Shakespeare

    The Floating Press 1753; US$ 3.95

    Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and one of his best-known plays. Often referred to as an archetypal tale, it warns against lust for power and the betrayal of friends. Shakespeare based the play loosely on a King Macbeth of Scotland. The play is traditionally considered "cursed", and thus many actors refer to it as "The Scottish Play" to avoid naming it. more...

  • Shakespeare's Sonnetsby William Shakespeare

    The Floating Press 1753; US$ 4.95

    The Sonnets compiles 154 Sonnets written by Shakespeare on all manner of themes from love and fidelity to politics and lineage. Many of the sonnets - in particular the first 17, commonly called the procreation sonnets - were commissioned, a fact which calls a simple, romantic reading into question. more...

  • Much Ado about Nothingby William Shakespeare

    The Floating Press 1753; US$ 3.95

    Shakespeare's comedy play Much Ado About Nothing pivots around the impediments to love for young betrothed Hero and Claudio when Hero is falsely accused of infidelity and the "lover's trap" set for the arrogant and assured Benedick who has sworn of marriage and his gentle adversary Beatrice. The merry war between Benedick and Beatrice with the promptings of their friends soon dissolves into farcical love, while Hero's supposed infidelity is shown to be little more... more...

  • Poems and Proseby Christina Rossetti; Simon Humphries

    Oxford University Press, UK 2008; US$ 8.95

    This edition brings together the fullest range of Rossetti's poetry and prose in one volume, including 'Goblin Market', stories (the complete text of Maude), devotional prose, and personal letters. The poetry is arranged in a single chronological sequence to show Rossetti's poetic development. - ;'The mystery of Life, the mystery. Of Death, I see. Darkly as in a glass...'. Christina Rossetti (1830-94) is perhaps the most contradictory of the great Victorian poets. She writes of the world's beauty, but fears that it may be deceptive, even deadly. She is a religious poet, but much of her work is driven by uncertainty. Her poems are restrained, even secretive, but they seek nothing less than the mystery of Life and... more...

  • The Alchemistby Ben Jonson

    The Floating Press 1900; US$ 4.95

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge said of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist that it had one out of the three most perfect plots in literature. This play, with its sharp portrayal of human folly, is considered by many to be Jonson's best comedy. First performed 1610, its popularity has endured to this day. more...

  • The Canterbury Tales in Modern Verseby Geoffrey Chaucer; Joseph Glaser

    Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 2005; US$ 8.95

    Readers of this witty and fluent new translation of The Canterbury Tales should find themselves turning page after page: by recasting Chaucer's ten-syllable couplets into eight-syllable lines, Joseph Glaser achieves a lighter, more rapid cadence than other translators, a four-beat rhythm well-established in the English poetic tradition up to Chaucer's time. Glaser's shortened lines make compelling reading and mirror the elegance and variety of Chaucer's verse to a degree rarely met by translations that copy Chaucer beat for beat. Moreover, this translation's full, Chaucerian range of diction?from earthy to Latinate?conveys the great scope of Chaucer's interests and effects. more...

  • Desire in the Renaissanceby Valeria Finucci; Regina Schwartz

    Princeton University Press 2001; US$ 46.95

    Drawing on a variety of psychoanalytic approaches, ten critics engage in exciting discussions of the ways the "inner life" is depicted in the Renaissance and the ways it is shown to interact with the "external" social and economic spheres. Spurred by the rise of capitalism and the nuclear family, Renaissance anxieties over changes in identity emerged in the period's unconscious--or, as Freud would have it, in its literature. Hence, much of Renaissance literature represents themes that have been prominent in the discourse of psychoanalysis: mistaken identity, incest, voyeurism, mourning, and the uncanny. The essays in this volume range from Spenser and Milton to Machiavelli and Ariosto, and focus on the fluidity of gender, the economics of... more...

  • Samuel Johnson and the Making of Modern Englandby Nicholas Hudson

    Cambridge University Press 2003; US$ 40.00

    Hudson examines Samuel Johnson's contribution to the creation of the modern English identity. more...