With the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain, justify and shape its new aims. In this book, David Summers provides an investigation of the philosophical and psychological notions invoked in this new theory and criticism. From a thorough examination of the sources, he shows how the medieval language of mental discourse derived from an understanding of classical thought.

The Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition is part of the landmark New Oxford Shakespeare—an entirely new consideration of all of Shakespeare's works, edited afresh from all the surviving original versions of his work, and drawing on the latest literary, textual, and theatrical scholarship. In one attractive volume, the Modern Critical Edition gives today's students and playgoers the very best resources they need to understand and enjoy all Shakespeare's works. The authoritative text is accompanied by extensive explanatory and performance notes, and innovative introductory materials which lead the reader into exploring questions about interpretation, textual variants, literary criticism, and performance, for themselves. The Modern Critical Edition presents the plays and poetry in the order in which Shakespeare wrote them, so that readers can follow the development of his imagination, his engagement with a rapidly evolving culture and theatre, and his relationship to his literary contemporaries. The New Oxford Shakespeare consists of four interconnected publications: the Modern Critical Edition (with modern spelling), the Critical Reference Edition (with original spelling), a companion volume on Authorship, and an online version integrating all of this material on OUP's high-powered scholarly editions platform. Together, they provide the perfect resource for the future of Shakespeare studies.

Jane Stabler offers the first full-scale examination of Byron's poetic form in relation to historical debates of his time. Responding to recent studies of publishing and audiences in the Romantic period, Stabler argues that Byron's poetics developed in response to contemporary cultural history and his reception by the English reading public. Drawing on extensive new archive research into Byron's correspondence and reading, Stabler traces the complexity of the intertextual dialogues that run through his work. For example, Stabler analyses Don Juan alongside Galignani's Messenger - Byron's principal source of news about British politics while in Italy - and refers to hitherto unpublished letters between Byron's publishers and his friends to reveal a powerful impulse among his contemporaries to direct his controversial poetic style to their own conflicting political ends. This fascinating study will be of interest to Byronists and, more broadly, to scholars of Romanticism in general.

The Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition is part of the landmark New Oxford Shakespeare--an entirely new consideration of all of Shakespeare's works, edited afresh from all the surviving original versions of his work, and drawing on the latest literary, textual, and theatrical scholarship.This single illustrated volume is expertly edited to frame the surviving original versions of Shakespeare's plays, poems, and early musical scores around the latest literary, textual, and theatrical scholarship to date.

The essays in this collection explore transcultural events to reveal deeper understandings of the dynamic nature, power and affect of performance as it is created and witnessed across national and cultural boundaries. Focusing on historical and contemporary public events in multiple contexts, contributors offer readings of transcultural exchanges between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, between colonisers and the colonised and back again. In the process the authors explore questions of aesthetics, cultural anxiety, cultural control and how to realise intentions in performance practice.