Research & Innovation

English drama at the beginning of the sixteenth century was allegorical, didactic and moralistic; but by the end of the century theatre was censured as emotional and even immoral. How could such a change occur? Cartwright suggests that some theories of early Renaissance theatre - particularly the theory that Elizabethan plays are best seen in the tradition of morality drama - need to be reconsidered. He proposes instead that humanist drama of the sixteenth century is theatrically exciting - rather than literary, elitist and dull as it has often been seen - and socially significant, and he attempts to integrate popular and humanist values rather than setting them against each other. Taking as examples the plays of Marlowe, Heywood, Lyly and Greene, as well as many by lesser-known dramatists, the book demonstrates the contribution of humanist drama to the theatrical vitality of the sixteenth century.

As the mother of seven boys, Mag Singer fears she will never have the career she dreams of. But she begins to re-evaluate her priorities after she learns that her troubled middle son is missing after the terrorist bombing of his Marine barracks in Beirut. For three days, as the family awaits word of his fate, they are forced to come to terms with themselves and each other, and to rediscover the deep reservoir of love they once shared.

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In this highly original and energetic study, Theodore B. Leinwand views Jacobean theater—particularly Jacobean city comedy—as a measure of the way Londoners of the time perceived each other. In forming a sophisticated view of the relations between Jacobean comedy and life, Leinwand makes a solid contribution not only to Jacobean theater, but, more broadly, to our understanding of the cultural, social, and political contexts within which all literature is produced.

Leinwand turns to the plays of Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, John Webster, George Chapman, John Fletcher, and Ben Jonson to see the ways in which Jacobean theater was bound up with contemporary social relations. He measures the attitudes implicit or expressed in the plays toward various London types of the day. These same figures appeared in the commentary of the time and Leinwand raises the question of how realistic stage portrayals were meant to be, and how they were likely to have been received by their audiences. He suggests that most sophisticated playwrights, by making their audiences aware of stereotype, urged them to think beyond it to a fuller sense of their own and other people's identities.

"A textile of other texts, a 'whodunit' of quotations, a book built of books." So Umberto Eco has described his phenomenally successful novel The Name of the Rose, Theresa Coletti, a medievalist with a special interest in modern critical theory, asserts that Eco, by means of a concrete rendering of medieval social and intellectual life, has made a significant contemporary statement about language, meaning responsible intellectual activity, and the nature of critical discourse. Naming the Rose explores the implications of the unusual status of Eco's novel- at once a highly sophisticated novel of ideas and a best-selling work of detective fiction- perceiving in its problematic reception and hybrid nature reflection of the cultural and theoretical issues with which Eco is concerned.

Concentrating on carefully chosen selections from ten writers, Mary Helen Washington explores the work, the realities, and the hopes of black women writers between 1860-1960.

Reviewed by Henry-Louis Gates, New York Times Book Review, October 4, 1987 and by Jewell Gomez in The Nation,, April 30, 1987. In The New Yorker, August 5, 2002, writer Hilton Als called Invented Lives an “invaluable study."

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Out of print.

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Richard Cross assesses the French writer's impact on his Irish counterpart through a comparison of tone, theme, and technique in their major writings. Juxtaposing passages from their novels, he reveals through textual analysis certain structural and thematic patterns.