"This sharply focused collection of essays on poetics and poetry, with special attention to Shakespeare, includes the work of some of the nation's best-known and most respected scholars and authors. All of them are former colleagues of O. B. Hardison, Jr., and their major new essays, written especially for this collection, center on his interests: Aristotle and classical poetics, Petrarch and Italian poetics, the English Renaissance, especially Shakespeare and Milton, and postmodernist work in theory, literature, and science."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This collection of essays by major Renaissance scholars demonstrates the vitality and variety of current historical approaches to studying early modern England - itself developing new ways to view the past. Here are, for example, a hitherto unpublished memoir, a discussion of Shakespeare's printed texts, new biographical approaches to Tudor writers, the recovery of manuscript sources, the tracing of intertextual relations, the impact of Renaissance humanism, and close readings that join an understanding of words' ambiguity to a refreshed awareness of historical context. --From publisher's description.

This volume, the ninth in the series of The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, presents newly edited critical texts of 25 love lyrics. Based on an exhaustive study of the manuscripts and printed editions in which these poems have appeared, Volume 4.2 details the genealogical history of each poem, accompanied by a thorough prose discussion, as well as a General Textual Introduction of the Songs and Sonets collectively. The volume also presents a comprehensive digest of the commentary on these Songs and Sonets from Donne's time through 1999. Arranged chronologically within sections, the material for each poem is organized under various headings that complement the volume's companions, Volume 4.1 and Volume 4.3.

The Tears of Sovereignty is a comparative study of the representation of the concept of sovereignty in paradigmatic plays of early modern English and Spanish drama. It argues that baroque drama produces the critical terms through which contemporary philosophical criticism continues to think through the problems of sovereignty today.

Stephen Guy-Bray argues that early modern authors used renditions of Theocritan and Virgilian pastoral, as well as epic poetry, for the exploration and the allusive presentation of homoerotic and homosocial themes.

Shuger's study of Measure to Measure offers a sweeping reinterpretation of English political thought in the aftermath of the Reformation, one that focuses not on the tension between Crown and Parliament but on the relation of the sacred to the state.

Epic poem, biography, literary criticism, historical romance—in A Gift, David Slavitt presents the fascinating life of Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, one of history’s great unknowns, a man blessed and cursed by his conviction that within him lay the capacity for literary greatness. Educated in the church, the young da Ponte carouses in Venice, flees Italy, and finds himself in Austria, trying to establish a career in the theater. Under the tepid patronage of Joseph II of Austria, he turns out libretti for Salieri and learns the “whorey tricks” of writing on demand: “Adaptation, translation, theft.” In lines that ring harrowingly true, Slavitt reflects the young man’s self-doubts: The mad hope grows like a mold on bread that it’s not so bad, is better than you think— but what that means is only that your judgment is going too, you can’t tell good from bad, are a fraud, impostor Then, on the brink of despair, he encounters Mozart—boorish, preferring crude farce to literary grace. Still, the partnership thrives with The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte. But good luck is not to be trusted, and “misfortune is not reliable either.” Despite his brilliant gift, success eludes da Ponte. Ever gullible, ever generous, he is destined to accumulate others’ debts, to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, to be forgotten. Da Ponte lives out his life in the fledgling United States, plagued by sickness, debt, and the implacably looming specter of failure. Slavitt has created a lovely, heartening book, one that reminds us that untested faith is no faith at all. Alight with muted passion, A Gift chronicles a man’s refusal to despair despite the growing awareness that nothing awaits but poverty and ignominy—“that this ill-fitting garment is what the wardrobe holds.” Through Slavitt’s lively imagination, we feel reverence rather than pity for the dogged nobility of da Ponte’s struggle. Ultimately, Lorenzo da Ponte is a hero, his life a victory.