Interweaving Myths in Shakespeare and his contemporaries, ed. Janice Valls-Russell, Agnès Lafont & Charlotte Coffin

Manchester University Press, 2017

304 pages, ISBN: 978-1-5261-1768-7

DESCRIPTION: This volume proposes new insights into the uses of classical mythology by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, focusing on interweaving processes in early modern appropriations of myth. Its 11 essays show how early modern writing intertwines diverse myths and plays with variant versions of individual myths that derive from multiple classical sources, as well as medieval, Tudor and early modern retellings and translations. Works discussed include poems and plays by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and others. Essays concentrate on specific plays including The Merchant of Venice and Dido, Queen of Carthage, tracing interactions between myths, chronicles, the Bible and contemporary genres. Mythological figures are considered to demonstrate how the weaving together of sources deconstructs gendered representations. New meanings emerge from these readings, which open up methodological perspectives on multi-textuality, artistic appropriation and cultural hybridity/

Contents

Introduction: ‘Ariachne’s broken woof’ – Janice Valls-Russell, Agnès Lafont and Charlotte Coffin

1. Shakespeare’s mythological feuilletage: A methodological induction – Yves Peyré
2. The non-Ovidian Elizabethan epyllion: Thomas Watson, Christopher Marlowe, Richard Barnfield – Tania Demetriou
3. This realm is an empire’: Tales of origins in medieval and early modern France and England – Dominique Goy-Blanquet
4. Trojan shadows in Shakespeare’s King John – Janice Valls-Russell
5. Venetian Jasons, parti-coloured lambs and a tainted wether: Ovine tropes and the Golden Fleece in The Merchant of Venice – Atsuhiko Hirota
6. Fifty ways to kill your brother: Medea and the poetics of fratricide in early modern English literature – Katherine Heavey
7. ‘She, whom Jove transported into Crete’: Europa, between consent and rape – Gaëlle Ginestet
8. Subtle weavers, mythological interweavings and feminine political agency: Penelope and Arachne in early modern drama – Nathalie Rivère de Carles
9. Multi-layered conversations in Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage – Agnès Lafont
10. Burlesque or neoplatonic? Popular or elite? The shifting value of classical mythology in Love’s Mistress– Charlotte Coffin
11. Pygmalion, once and future myth: Instead of a conclusion – Ruth Morse

Index

Details: http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526117687/

Editors

• Janice Valls-Russell is employed by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier, France, where she coordinates early modern research projects
• Agnès Lafont is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature at Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, France
• Charlotte Coffin is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature at Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne, France

Empires and Revolutions: Cunninghame Graham and his Contemporaries, edited by Carla Sassi and Silke Stroh

Glasgow: Scottish Literature International, August 2017

ISBN 978-1-908980-25-0

192 pages
Paperback
£ 12.95  /  € 17.95  /  $ 19.95

The European age of empires launched a process of capitalist globalisation that continues to the present day. It is also inextricably linked with the spread of revolutionary discourses, in terms of race, nation, or social class: the quest for emancipation, political independence, and economic equality. Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936), in both his life and his oeuvre, most effectively represents the complex interaction between imperial and revolutionary discourses in this dramatic period. Throughout his life he was an outspoken critic of injustice and inequality, and his appreciation of the demands and customs of diverse territories and contrasting cultures were hallmarks of his life, his political ideas, and his writing. These essays explore the expression of these ideas in the works of Cunninghame Graham and of other Scottish writers of the period.

Contents

• Introduction (by Carla Sassi & Silke Stroh)
• Chapter 1: R. B. Cunninghame Graham: Janiform Genius (by Cedric Watts)
• Chapter 2: The Local and the Global: The Multiple Contexts of Cunninghame Graham
  (by John M. MacKenzie)
• Chapter 3: Anti-Slavery Discourse in Three Adventure Stories by R. M. Ballantyne
  (by Jochen Petzold)
• Chapter 4: Don Roberto on Doughty Deeds; or, Slavery and Family History in the Scottish Renaissance
  (by Michael Morris)
• Chapter 5: Empire and Globalisation in John Francis Campbell’s My Circular Notes
  (by Jessica Homberg-Schramm)
• Chapter 6: Nineteenth-Century Argentine Literature and the Writings of R. B. Cunninghame Graham
  (by Richard Niland)
• Chapter 7: R. B. Cunninghame Graham and the Argentinean Angelito (by Jennifer Hayward)
• Chapter 8: Opposing Racism and Imperialism: Isabella Fyvie Mayo’s search for literary space(s), 1880–1914 (by Lindy Moore)
• Chapter 9: The Empire in Cunninghame Graham’s Parliamentary Speeches and Early Writings, 1885–1900 (by Lachlan Munro)
• Chapter 10: White-Skinned Barbarians in Selected Tales by R. B. Cunninghame Graham
  (by John C. McIntyre)
• Chapter 11: Violet Jacob on Capital Relation: Local and Global Flows of Privilege and (Im)mobility
  (by Arianna Introna)

Editors

• Carla Sassi is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Verona
• Silke Stroh is a lecturer in anglophone literature and cultural studies at Muenster University, Germany

Online information

http://asls.arts.gla.ac.uk/Empires_and_Revolutions.html

Hubert Zapf (ed.), Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology

HEAS Volume 2

2016, 725 pages
Special Offer of €49,95 (regular price € 199,95)

Ecocriticism has emerged as one of the most fascinating and rapidly growing fields of recent literary and cultural studies. From its regional origins in late-twentieth-century Anglo-American academia, it has become a worldwide phenomenon, which involves a decidedly transdisciplinary and transnational paradigm that promises to return a new sense of relevance to research and teaching in the humanities. A distinctive feature of the present handbook in comparison with other survey volumes is the combination of ecocriticism with cultural ecology, reflecting an emphasis on the cultural transformation of ecological processes and on the crucial role of literature, art, and other forms of cultural creativity for the evolution of societies towards sustainable futures. In state-of-the-art contributions by leading international scholars in the field, this handbook maps some of the most important developments in contemporary ecocritical thought. It introduces key theoretical concepts, issues, and directions of ecocriticism and cultural ecology and demonstrates their relevance for the analysis of texts and other cultural phenomena.

This is a special paperback offer for individual members of the ESSE, only. Valid until 15.10.2017.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r8lz1ynkm7plg5z/HEAS%20PB%20FLYER_ESSE.pdf?dl=0

Gabriele Rippl (ed.), Handbook of Intermediality: Literature – Image – Sound – Music

HEAS Volume 1

2015, 701 pages
Special Offer €49,95 (regular price €199,95)

This handbook offers students and researchers compact orientation in their study of intermedial phenomena in Anglophone literary texts and cultures by introducing them to current academic debates, theoretical concepts and methodologies. By combining theory with text analysis and contextual anchoring, it introduces students and scholars alike to a vast field of research which encompasses concepts such as intermediality, multi- and plurimediality, intermedial reference, transmediality, ekphrasis, as well as related concepts such as visual culture, remediation, adaptation, and multimodality, which are all discussed in connection with literary examples. Hence each of the 30 contributions spans both a theoretical approach and concrete analysis of literary texts from different centuries and different Anglophone cultures.

This is a special paperback offer for individual members of the ESSE, only. Valid until 15.10.2017.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r8lz1ynkm7plg5z/HEAS%20PB%20FLYER_ESSE.pdf?dl=0

Laurent Curelly, An Anatomy of an English Radical Newspaper: The Moderate (1648-9)

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017

280 pages

This book explores the content of The Moderate, a radical newspaper of the British Civil Wars published in the pivotal years 1648-9. This newsbook, as newspapers were then known, is commonly associated with the Leveller movement, a radical political group that promoted a democratic form of government. While valuable studies have been published on the history of seventeenth-century English periodicals, as well as on the interaction between these newspapers and print culture at large, very little has been written on individual newspapers. This book fills a void: it provides an in-depth investigation of the news printed in The Moderate, with reference to other newspapers and to the larger historical context, and captures the essence of this periodical, seen both as a political publication and a commercial product. This book will be of interest to early-modern historians and literary scholars.

The Cambridge Scholars Publishing website makes it possible to view the first thirty pages of the book:
http://www.cambridgescholars.com/an-anatomy-of-an-english-radical-newspaper

Spectacular Science, Technology and Superstition in the Age of Shakespeare, Sophie Chiari and Mickaël Popelard (eds.)

Edinburgh University Press, 2017

288 pages. ISBN (Hardback) : 9781474427814

Editors:

• Sophie Chiari, Professor at Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, France.
• Mickaël Popelard, Associate Professor at Université de Basse-Normandie, Caen, France.

The volume explores the interaction between science, literature and spectacle in Shakespeare’s era.

To the readers who ask themselves: ‘What is science?’, this volume provides an answer from an early modern perspective, whereby science included such various intellectual pursuits as history, poetry, occultism and philosophy. By exploring particular aspects of Shakespearean drama, this collection illustrates how literature and science were inextricably linked in the early modern period. In order to bridge the gap between Renaissance literature and early modern science, the essays collected here focus on a complex intellectual territory situated at the point of juncture between humanism, natural magic and craftsmanship. It is argued that science and literature constantly interacted, thus revealing that what we now call ‘literature’ and what we choose to describe as ‘science’ were not clear-cut categories in Shakespeare’s days but rather a part of common intellectual territory.

Key Features

• Analyses different aspects of Shakespeare’s plays through the prism of early modern science
• Sheds fresh light on major works such as the Sonnets, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale
• Combines theoretical views, historical approaches, and close readings
• Offers an innovative dialectic vision of the Shakespeare/science nexus, taking up Mazzio’s seminal idea that it is now necessary to “move beyond forms of analysis focused largely on thematic traces of, or indeed linguistic reflections of, historically specific arenas of scientific practice”
• Links science and spectacle and posits that early modern theatre fashioned the reception of early modern discoveries
• Pays attention to systems of thought which bind together scientific and literary discourses, practices and mentalities within a single episteme (in Michel Foucault’s interpretation of the word)

During the month of July, Routledge is making the following book available for download in pdf format for free, as complimentary sharing on ReadCube platform: Television and Serial Adaptation, by Shannon Wells-Lassagne, Senior Lecturer at the University of Burgundy-Franche Comté in Dijon, France. This book was first published in 2017, ISBN:978-1-138-69635-8 (hbk); ISBN: 978-1-315-52453-5 (ebk).

http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.4324/9781315524535…

The book is part of the Routledge Advances in Television Studies series.

Details about the book here: https://essenglish.org/messenger/blog/book-announcement-television-and-serial-adaptation/

Martine Monacelli (ed.) Male Voices on Women’s Rights: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Texts

Manchester University Press,

Published 1st Juily 2017

Male voices on women’s rights is a timely complement to the studies undertaken in recent years on men’s roles in the history of feminism.This unique collection of seminal, little-known or forgotten writings, spanning from 1809 to 1913, will help the revision of many common assumptions and misconceptions regarding male attitudes to sex equality, and give some insight into the tensions provoked by shifting patterns of masculinity and re-definitions of femininity. The documents, drawn from a wide range of sources, throw a light on the role played by the radical tradition, liberal culture, religious dissent and economic criticism in the development of women’s politics in nineteenthcentury Britain.
The collection includes a substantial historical introduction and a short contextualising essay before each excerpt, making it an accessible resource for students and teachers alike.

Martine Monacelli is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France.

Stéphanie A.H. Bélanger and Renée Dickason (eds.), War Memories: Commemoration, Recollections, and Writings on War

McGill- Queen’s University Press 2017.

4489 pages
ISBN-10: 0773547932
ISBN-13: 978-0773547933

Shaping individual and collective war memories through the art of commemoration.

War Memories explores the patchwork formed by collective memory, public remembrance, private recollection, and the ways in which they form a complex composition of observations, initiatives, and experiences.

Offering an international perspective on war commemoration, contributors consider the process of assembling historical facts and subjective experiences to show how these points of view diverge according to various social, cultural, political, and historical perspectives. Encompassing the representations of wars in the English-speaking world over the last hundred years, this collection presents an extensive, yet integrated, reflection on various types of commemoration and interpretations of events. Essays respond to common questions regarding war memory: how and why do we remember war? What does commemoration tell us about the actors in wars? How does commemoration reflect contemporary society’s culture of war?

War Memories disseminates current knowledge on the performance, interpretation, and rewriting of facts and events during and after wars, while focusing on how patriotic fervour, resistance, conscientious objection, injury, trauma, and propaganda contribute to the shaping of individual and collective memory.

Continue reading “Book Announcement: War Memories – Commemoration, Recollections, and Writings on War” →

Carlo M. Bajetta (ed.), Elizabeth I’s Italian Letters

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Hardcover and e-book: lxxvii + 285 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2017
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1137442328
ISBN-13: 978-1137442321
Series: “Queenship and Power”

Contents 

Introduction (pp. xxi- lxxvii)
Letters 1-29 (pp. 1-250)
Appendix 1 [letter 30] (pp. 251-259)
Bibliography (pp. 261-275)
Index of names (pp. 277- 285)

With 9 illustrations from the original manuscripts

About the volume

This is the first edition ever of the Queen’s correspondence in Italian. These letters cast a new light on her talents as a linguist and provide interesting details as to her political agenda, and on the cultural milieu of her court. This book provides a fresh analysis of the surviving evidence concerning Elizabeth’s learning and use of Italian, and of the activity of the members of her ‘Foreign Office.’ All of the documents transcribed here are accompanied by a short introduction focusing on their content and context, a brief description of their transmission history, and an English translation.

Continue reading “Book Announcement: Elizabeth I’s Italian Letters” →

Michael Dobson and Estelle Rivier-Arnaud (eds.), Rewriting Shakespeare’s Plays For and By the Contemporary Stage

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 1 June 2017. 195 pages

ISBN-10: 1443882801
ISBN-13: 978-1443882804

Why have contemporary playwrights been obsessed by Shakespeare’s plays to such an extent that most of the canon has been rewritten by one rising dramatist or another over the last half century? Among other key figures, Edward Bond, Heiner Müller, Carmelo Bene, Arnold Wesker, Tom Stoppard, Howard Barker, Botho Strauss, Tim Crouch, Bernard Marie Koltès, and Normand Chaurette have all put their radical originality into the service of adapting four-century-old classics. The resulting works provide food for thought on issues such as Shakespearean role-playing, narrative and structural re-shuffling. Across the world, new writers have questioned the political implications and cultural stakes of repeating Shakespeare with and without a difference, finding inspiration in their own national experiences and in the different ordeals they have undergone. How have our contemporaries carried out their rewritings, and with what aims? Can we still play Hamlet, for instance, as Dieter Lesage asks in his book bearing this title, or do we have to kill Shakespeare as Normand Chaurette implies in a work where his own creative process is detailed? What do these rewritings really share with their sources? Are they meaningful only because of Shakespeares shadow haunting them? Where do we draw the lines between interpretation, adaptation and rewriting? The contributors to this collection of essays examine modern rewritings of Shakespeare from both theoretical and pragmatic standpoints. Key questions include: can a rewriting be meaningful without the readers or spectators already knowing Shakespeare? Do modern rewritings supplant Shakespeares texts or curate them? Does the survival of Shakespeare in the theatrical repertory actually depend on the continued dramatization of our difficult encounters with these potentially obsolete scripts represented by rewriting? Continue reading “Book Announcement: Rewriting Shakespeare’s Plays For and By the Contemporary Stage” →

Paula Harrington and Ronald Jenn, Mark Twain & France: The Making of a New American Identity

University of Missouri Press (USA), 2017

Blending cultural history, biography, and literary criticism, this book explores how one of America’s greatest icons used the French to help build a new sense of what it is to be “American” in the second half of the nineteenth century.

While critics have generally dismissed Mark Twain’s relationship with France as hostile, Harrington and Jenn see Twain’s use of the French as a foil to help construct his identity as “the representative American.” Examining new materials that detail his Montmatre study, the carte de visite album, and a chronology of his visits to France, the book offers close readings of writings that have been largely ignored, such as The Innocents Adrift manuscript and the unpublished chapters of A Tramp Abroad, combining literary analysis, socio-historical context and biographical research.

About the authors

Paula Harrington, Colby College, Maine, USA
Ronald Jenn, Université Charles de Gaulle, Lille 3, France

Arnaud Schmitt, The Phenomenology of Autobiography: Making it Real

© 2017 – Routledge

Making it Real takes a deep dive into the experience of the reader. Dr. Schmitt argues that current trends in the field of life writing have taken the focus away from the text and the initial purpose of autobiography as a means for the author to communicate with a reader and narrate an experience. The study puts autobiography back into a communicational context, and putting forth the notion that one of the reasons why life writing can so often be aesthetically unsatisfactory, or difficult to distinguish from novels, is because it should not be considered as a literary genre, but as a modality with radically different rules and means of evaluation. In other words, not only is autobiography radically different from fiction due to its referentiality, but, first and foremost, it should be read differently.

Details: https://www.routledge.com/The-Phenomenology-of-Autobiography-Making-it-Real/Schmitt/p/book/9781138710290

New Perspectives on Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”, co-edited by Sophie Chiari, Sophie Lemercier-Goddard and Michèle Vignaux

Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal
Mai 2017

ISBN (Book) : 978-2-84516-756-8
ISBN (PDF) : 978-2-84516-757-5

A favourite with audiences and critics alike, Shakespeare’s As You Like It owes part of its appeal to its seemingly endless capacity for recreation. Despite the apparent simplicity of its plot, it offers a whole gamut of emotions and engages with the act of counterfeiting, thereby proposing a multiplicity of mirror games, from its binary and symmetrical structure to its linguistic games and ritual inversions. Yet, the comedy’s “true delights” (5.4.182) should not overshadow its deep social and political relevance. This volume intends to shed fresh light on Shakespeare’s “green” comedy so as to emphasise its powerful resonances today. Divided into four parts, it first deals with some of the main ecocritical issues at work in the play before examining Shakespeare’s reassessment of human nature. The volume then proceeds with the experimental dimension of As You Like It and explores specific issues related to staging and editing. An Epilogue presented as a question-and-answer session provides clarifying remarks on the comedy’s rich literary background. Working with a variety of approaches, these essays highlight the complexity of a fascinating play while taking stock of the recent critical trends in Shakespearean studies.

Details

Website of PUBP
Table of Contents

About the Volume
Table of Contents