Existing accounts of Fielding's political ideas are insufficiently aware of the structure of politics in the first half of the eighteenth century, and of the ways in which Whig political ideology developed following the Revolution of 1688. This political biography explains and illustrates what 'being a Whig' meant to Fielding.

These essays are concerned with values and judgments in Fielding's novelsóboth those which the novels express and those to which the novelist directs the reader. Fielding scholars will find these essays stimulating, and they will be accessible as well to the undergraduate and the general reader.

This book traces blackface types from ancient masks of grinning Africans and phallus-bearing Roman fools through to comedic medieval devils, the pan-European black-masked Titivillus and Harlequin, and racial impersonation via stereotypical 'black speech' explored in the Renaissance by Lope de Vega and Shakespeare. Jim Crow and antebellum minstrelsy recycled Old World blackface stereotypes of irrationality, ignorance, pride, and immorality. Drawing upon biblical interpretations and philosophy, comic types from moral allegory originated supposedly modern racial stereotypes. Early blackface traditions thus spread damning race-belief that black people were less rational, hence less moral and less human. Such notions furthered the global Renaissance’s intertwined Atlantic slave and sugar trades and early nationalist movements. The latter featured overlapping definitions of race and nation, as well as of purity of blood, language, and religion in opposition to 'Strangers'. Ultimately, Old World beliefs still animate supposed 'biological racism' and so-called 'white nationalism' in the age of Trump.

Dance and literature seem to have much in common. Both are part of a culture, represent a culture, and subvert a culture. Yet at the same time, they appear to be medial antagonists: one is kinetic and multimedial, the other (often) verbal and seemingly mono-medial. What happens, however, when both meet; when movement is integrated into the literary world or even replaces verbal communication? Dance is artistic and popular, traditional and innovative, bodily and ephemeral. It holds cultural and kinetic information in a nutshell and thus brings movement and cultural history into a text. Shakespeare’s plays, Restoration comedy, 19th century caricature, popular and elitist theatre, all make use of dance as special means of signification. Thus, this study explores dance in British literature from Shakespeare to Yeats, and illustrates the many ways in which these two forms of artistic expression can enter into various kinds of intermedial encounters and cultural alliances.