In these essays Northrop Frye addresses a question which preoccupied him throughout his long and distinguished career - the conception of comedy, particularly Shakespearean comedy, and its relation to human experience. In most forms of comedy, and certainly in the New Comedy with which Shakespeare was concerned, the emphasis is on moving towards a climax in which the end incorporates the beginning. Such a climax is a vision of deliverance or expanded energy and freedom. Frye draws on the Aristotelian notion of reversal, or peripeteia, to analyse the three plays commonly known as the 'problem comedies': "Measure for Measure," "All's Well That Ends Well," and "Troilus and Cressida," showing how they anticipate the romances of Shakespeare's final period.

An indispensable overview of the evolution of myth, from ancient Greek definitions to those of contemporary thinkers.

Is Jesus mythological? And is he a mere product of his cultural milieu? Through narratological and social-scientific analysis of the gospel account, Barber systematically demonstrates that there are two opposing patterns structuring the gospel. The first is the pattern of this world, which is the combat myth, with a typical sequence of motifs having mythological meanings. It is lived out by everyone else in the accounts except Jesus, because this pattern of the world is the pattern of myth-culture, which is the pattern of the old Adam and sin nature. The pattern of Jesus is the pattern intended for Adam to walk in, and is the unique pattern of the new Adam, Jesus Christ. Jesus's pattern inverts the sequence and subverts the significance of each and every motif and episode of the myth-culture's pattern. Barber shows that Jesus's "failure" to conform to this world's mythological pattern establishes that he is not mythological, and not a product of his culture. As the apostle Peter states, ". . . we did not follow cleverly devised tales [myths] when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty" (2 Pet 1:16).

In this major work of historical and political analysis, Mona Harrington examines curcial missteps and uncertainties in the American statecraft from Woodrow Wilson’s time to Ronald Reagan’s, and traces them to a potent myth at the center of our political thinking. It is a myth peculiarly American, a long-held belief that the troubles of society can be traced to some specific “evil”—be it a profiteering in munitions, or the multinational corporation, or the communist conspiracy, or wasteful social programs—and that by smiting the evil we can achieve social well-being for all. The author demonstrates how deeply this dream of deliverance has been rooted in American culture from the very beginnings of the nation—in the concept of a society in which conflicts between groups of widely divergent interests can be resolved without undeserved loss to any party. We see the consequences of this belief in our continuing tendency to oversimplify issues both domestic and foreign—and in our obsessive expenditure of public energy on the search for and pursuit of the evil to be exorcised. The dilemma is further exacerbated because the country’s three major economic-interest groups—industrial wage earners, industrial owners and managers, and the cluster of interests tied to local economies—are prone to demonologies as widely divergent as their interests, and there can seldom be agreement as to the identity of the evil. How this bondage to the dream of deliverance has affected the functioning of American government—making our politics a never-ending argument whose terms have scarcely changed over the past century—is brilliant explicated. Connecting the deepest workings of statecraft to what we know about the dynamics of our own individual lives, this highly original book leads us away from a myth-driven politics and toward a difficult encounter with reality, toward liberation from the endless search for the serpent whose defeat with return us to Eden, toward a national recognition that in conditions of conflict it is not always possibly for all to emerge as winners, toward the shaping of a politics that will enable us to allocate in the most decent possible way the losses that we cannot avoid.

This book provides a comprehensive portrait of the Sabras (the state of Israeli's first generation, born between the 1930's and 40's) recreating their life, their thought, and their role in Jewish history.

This collection of Northrop Frye's writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance spans forty years of his career as a university teacher, public critic, and major theorist of literature and its cultural functions. Extensive annotations and an in-depth critical introduction demonstrate Frye's wide-ranging knowledge of Renaissance culture, the pivotal place of the Renaissance in his oeuvre, his impact on Renaissance criticism and on the Stratford Festival, and his continuing importance as a literary theorist. This volume brings together Frye's extensive writings on Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers (excluding Milton, who is featured in other volumes), and includes major articles, introductions, public lectures, and four previously published books on Shakespeare. Frye's insightful analyses offer not just a formidable knowledge of Renaissance culture but also a transformative experience, moving the reader imaginatively towards an experience of created reality.

This innovative casebook introduces readers to wide-ranging critical dialogue about the work of Ted Hughes, one of the most popular and influential British poets of the 20th century. In twelve new essays, international authorities on Hughes examine and debate his work, shedding new light on familiar texts. Split into two parts, the first half of this book examines Hughes' work through cultural contexts, such as postmodernism and the carnivalesque, while the second part uses literary theories including postcolonialism, ecocriticism and trauma theory to interpret his poetry. Providing fresh inspiration and insights into the various diverse ways in which Hughes' writing can be interpreted, this volume is an ideal introduction to both literary theory and the work of Ted Hughes for literature students and scholars alike.