“Lisa Goldstein mixes history, faerie, literature and love to engrave a tale both intelligent and fine. [Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon] is, from first to last, a delight.” —Neil Gaiman London in the time of Queen Elizabeth I is a bustling place, its streets crowded with vendors selling goods from all over the world. In the courtyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Alice Wood competes with other booksellers, hawking pamphlets, plays, and the latest poetry from the continent. It is a lonely life for a hardworking young widow, and she will soon put it aside. When a black-clad stranger visits, speaking in riddles and asking questions about her long-vanished son, Alice will be drawn into an adventure straight out of one of her faerie stories. The Elizabethan court has been infiltrated by the Fair Folk, a race of magical beings whose intentions are shadowy and dangerous. With the help of Christopher Marlowe, the city’s most dashing playwright, Alice must untangle the faerie conspiracy to save her son—and the crown.

A Fairie Queen and her court invade Elizabethan London and fight a magical battle for the reborn King Arthur in a tale of dragons, faeries, and alchemy

In this classic work, acclaimed Shakespeare critic C. L. Barber argues that Elizabethan seasonal festivals such as May Day and Twelfth Night are the key to understanding Shakespeare's comedies. Brilliantly interweaving anthropology, social history, and literary criticism, Barber traces the inward journey--psychological, bodily, spiritual--of the comedies: from confusion, raucous laughter, aching desire, and aggression, to harmony. Revealing the interplay between social custom and dramatic form, the book shows how the Elizabethan antithesis between everyday and holiday comes to life in the comedies' combination of seriousness and levity. "I have been led into an exploration of the way the social form of Elizabethan holidays contributed to the dramatic form of festive comedy. To relate this drama to holiday has proved to be the most effective way to describe its character. And this historical interplay between social and artistic form has an interest of its own: we can see here, with more clarity of outline and detail than is usually possible, how art develops underlying configurations in the social life of a culture."--C. L. Barber, in the Introduction This new edition includes a foreword by Stephen Greenblatt, who discusses Barber's influence on later scholars and the recent critical disagreements that Barber has inspired, showing that Shakespeare's Festive Comedy is as vital today as when it was originally published.

The current surge of interest in the Elizabethan poet, dramatist, prose-writer and critic, Thomas Nashe, follows years of neglect or undisguised hostility. Yet, as early allusions testify, Nashe was a name which imposed itself on contemporary culture. Nashe annoyed and even disturbed his contemporaries, but they certainly paid attention to him because he pioneered new approaches to writing, and indeed to living, and because he was an astute critic. The essays in this volume have been chosen for the skill with which they present diverse approaches to key issues in Nashe. All Nashe's texts are covered, as are his relationships with contemporaries, like Shakespeare. The introduction analyses different approaches, locating them in the history of Nashe criticism, and suggests areas for future research. It argues that Nashe's importance to Renaissance studies lies in his anomalousness, as he forces us to rethink the Renaissance. He makes the Renaissance unfamiliar again, and pushes criticism out of its comfort zone.

Magical, miraculous¾and sometimes mischieviousãfourteen tales of angelic adventure! A collection of fifteen short stories depicts angelic interventions in subtle forms and includes the writings of such authors as Isaac Asimov, Tanith Lee, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Roger Zelazny. _BasileusÓ by Robert Silverberg _AngelicaÓ by Jane Yolen _AngelsÓ by Bruce McAllister _If Angels Ate ApplesÓ by Geoffrey A. Landis _AlfredÓ by Lisa Goldstein _A Plethora of AngelsÓ by Robert Sampson _The Man Who Loved the FaioliÓ by Roger Zelazny _Upon the Dull EarthÓ by Philip K. Dick _AngelÓ by Pat Cadigan _Curse of the Angel's WifeÓ by Bruce Boston _Sleepers AwakeÓ by Jamil Nasir _And the Angels SingÓ by Kate Wilhelm _Grave AngelsÓ by Richard Kearns _All VowsÓ by Esther M. Friesner At the publisher's request, these titles are sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

At last, here is a definitive classroom reading anthology of modern science fiction--endorsed by the Science Fiction Research Association. The book includes SF in all its modern diversity, from Golden Age writers, to latter-day titans and current popular writers.