In recent decades, the evidence for an oral epic tradition in ancient Greece has grown enormously along with our ever-increasing awareness of worldwide oral traditions. John Foley here examines the artistic implications that oral tradition holds for the understanding of the Iliad and Odyssey in order to establish a context for ......
Phantasm, Melancholy, and Didacticism in ""Celestina""
The late medieval masterpiece Celestina has long been the focus of controversy, over both its authorship and the apparent contradictions and inconsistencies within its plot. Scholars trace the publication of Celestina to 1499, when Fernando de Rojas supposedly discovered the first act and completed the remainder of the drama ......
A comprehensive study of the influence Spenser had on the forms, images, and style of the principal Romantic poets, this volume explores how Spenserianism pervades not just their writings but also the subconscious thinking and spirit of the Romantic era.
Edmund Spenser's tremendous popularity among the Romantics has always been ......
Foundation Sacrifice in Dante's "Commedia" is the first book to take an anthropological approach to the Divine Comedy, applying it to a previously unexplored dimension of Dante's great poem. Ricardo Quinones examines foundation sacrifice—the death of another that has become a parable for existence—as a ......
Scaramuzza, Scaramouche: the commedia dell'arte figure made a triumphal entry into German literature in the plays of Caspar Stieler (1632–1707). Transformed into a master of language and languages, Scaramutza—social critic, voluptuary, and mouthpiece for his author—ushers in a new type of comedy that depends more on the happy ......
Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England
Long neglected as a marginal and eccentric figure, Thomas Hoccleve (1367–1426) wrote some of the most sophisticated and challenging poetry of the late Middle Ages. Full of gossip and autobiographical detail, his work has made him immensely useful to modern scholars, yet Hoccleve the poet has remained decidedly in the shadow of Geoffrey ......
Literary Reception and Cultural Authority in the Early Republic
The New England Milton concentrates on the poet's place in the writings of the Unitarians and the Transcendentalists, especially Emerson, Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, Jones Very, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker, and demonstrates that his reception by both groups was a function of their response as members of the New England ......
A collection of nearly 3,000 letters written over a half century that reveals Whitman. It includes the poet's correspondence from Washington, DC, during the Civil War, where he nursed wounded and dying soldiers.
A collection of nearly 3,000 letters written over a half century which reveals Whitman. It presents the poet during the years he was developing an international reputation.
