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One of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year • A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • A New York Times Notable Book A timely exploration of what Shakespeare’s plays reveal about our divided land. “In this sprightly and enthralling book . . . Shapiro amply demonstrates [that] for Americans the politics of Shakespeare are not confined to the public realm, but have enormous relevance in the sphere of private life.” —The Guardian (London) The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes—presidents and activists, soldiers and writers, conservatives and liberals alike—have turned to Shakespeare’s works to explore the nation’s fault lines. In a narrative arching from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned. From Abraham Lincoln’s and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth’s, competing Shakespeare obsessions to the 2017 controversy over the staging of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated, Shakespeare in a Divided America reveals how no writer has been more embraced, more weaponized, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history.

Shakespeare Left and Right brings together critics, strikingly different in their politics and methodologies, who are acutely aware of the importance of politics on literary practice and theory. Should, for example, feminist criticism be subjected to a critique by voices it construes as hostile to its political agenda? Is it possible to present a critique of feminist criticism without implicitly impeding its politics? And, in the light of recent political events should the Right pronounce the demise of Marxism as a social science and interpretive tool? The essays in Shakespeare Left and Right, first published in 1991, present a tug of war about ideology, acted out over the body of Shakespeare. Part One focuses on the challenge thrown down by Richard Levin's widely discussed "Feminist Thematics and Shakespearean Tragedy". Part Two considers these issues in relation to critical practice and the reading of specific plays. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and academics interested in Shakespeare studies.

The range of poetic invention that occurred in Renaissance English literature was vast, from the lyric eroticism of the late sixteenth century to the rise of libertinism in the late seventeenth century. Heather James argues that Ovid, as the poet-philosopher of literary innovation and free speech, was the galvanizing force behind this extraordinary level of poetic creativity. Moving beyond mere topicality, she identifies the ingenuity, novelty and audacity of the period's poetry as the political inverse of censorship culture. Considering Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton and Wharton among many others, the book explains how free speech was extended into the growing domain of English letters, and thereby presents a new model of the relationship between early modern poetry and political philosophy.

“Emma Griffin gives a new and powerful voice to the men and women whose blood and sweat greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution” (Tim Hitchcock, author of Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London). This “provocative study” looks at hundreds of autobiographies penned between 1760 and 1900 to offer an intimate firsthand account of how the Industrial Revolution was experienced by the working class (The New Yorker). The era didn’t just bring about misery and poverty. On the contrary, Emma Griffin shows how it raised incomes, improved literacy, and offered exciting opportunities for political action. For many, this was a period of new, and much valued, sexual and cultural freedom. This rich personal account focuses on the social impact of the Industrial Revolution, rather than its economic and political histories. In the tradition of bestselling books by Liza Picard, Judith Flanders, and Jerry White, Griffin gets under the skin of the period and creates a cast of colorful characters, including factory workers, miners, shoemakers, carpenters, servants, and farm laborers. “Through the ‘messy tales’ of more than 350 working-class lives, Emma Griffin arrives at an upbeat interpretation of the Industrial Revolution most of us would hardly recognize. It is quite enthralling.” —The Oldie magazine “A triumph, achieved in fewer than 250 gracefully written pages. They persuasively purvey Griffin’s historical conviction. She is intimate with her audience, wooing it and teasing it along the way.” —The Times Literary Supplement “An admirably intimate and expansive revisionist history.” —Publishers Weekly

The leading U.S. history textbook, with a new focus on "Who is an American?"

Shakespeare Studies is an international volume published every year in hard cover that contains essays and studies by critics and cultural historians from both hemispheres. Although the journal maintains a focus on the theatrical milieu of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, it is also concerned with Britain's intellectual and cultural connections to the continent, its sociopolitical history, and its place in the emerging globalism of the period. In addition to articles, the journal includes substantial reviews of significant publications dealing with these issues, as well as theoretical studies relevant to scholars of early modem culture. Volume XXXVI features another in the journal's ongoing series of Forums, in which scholars exchange views on an issue of importance to early modern studies. Organized and introduced by Patrick Cheney, the Forum is entitled The Return of the Author and includes commentary by ten contributors considering the issue of authorship in a postmodern milieu. Volume XXXVI also features essays on Shakespeare's Hamlet, Henry V, and Richard II and an essay on Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, as well as fourteen reviews by scholars on such wide-ranging topics as early modern cultural capitals, the Jamestown project, shaping sound in Renaissance England, the places of London comedy, Shakespeare's Shylock, and the connections between animals, rationality, and humanity in Shakespeare's time. Susan Zimmerman is Professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. Garrett Sullivan is Associate Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University.