Inscribing The Time

Combining the resources of new historicism, feminism, and postmodern textual analysis, Eric Mallin reveals how contemporary pressures left their marks on three Shakespeare plays written at the end of Elizabeth's reign. Close attention to the language of Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night reveals the ways the plays echo the events and anxieties that accompanied the beginning of the seventeenth century. Troilus reflects the rebellion of the Earl of Essex and the failure of the courtly, chivalric style. Hamlet resonates with the danger of the bubonic plague and the difficult succession history of James I. Twelfth Night is imbued with nostalgia for an earlier period of Elizabeth's rule, when her control over religious and erotic affairs seemed more secure. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Combining the resources of new historicism, feminism, and postmodern textual analysis, Eric Mallin reveals how contemporary pressures left their marks on three Shakespeare plays written at the end of Elizabeth's reign. Close attention to the language of Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night reveals the ways the plays echo the events and anxieties that accompanied the beginning of the seventeenth century. Troilus reflects the rebellion of the Earl of Essex and the failure of the courtly, chivalric style. Hamlet resonates with the danger of the bubonic plague and the difficult succession history of James I. Twelfth Night is imbued with nostalgia for an earlier period of Elizabeth's rule, when her control over religious and erotic affairs seemed more secure. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Opening Acts: Performance in/as Communication and Cultural Criticism offers new, rigorous ways to analyze communication and culture through performance. Editor Judith Hamera, along with a distinguished list of contributors, provides students with cutting-edge readings of everyday life, space, history, and intersections of all three, using a critical performance-based approach. This text makes three significant contributions to the field - it familiarizes readers with the core elements and commitments of performance-based analysis, links performance-based analysis to theoretical and analytical perspectives in communication and cultural studies, and provides engaging examples of how to use performance as a critical tool to open up communication and culture. offers new, rigorous ways to analyze communication and culture through performance. Editor Judith Hamera, along with a distinguished list of contributors, provides students with cutting-edge readings of everyday life, space, history, and intersections of all three, using a critical performance-based approach. This text makes three significant contributions to the field - it familiarizes readers with the core elements and commitments of performance-based analysis, links performance-based analysis to theoretical and analytical perspectives in communication and cultural studies, and provides engaging examples of how to use performance as a critical tool to open up communication and culture.

Focusing on the work of black, diasporic writers in Canada, particularly Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, and Tessa McWatt, Blackening Canada investigates the manner in which literature can transform conceptions of nation and diaspora. Through a consideration of literary representation, public discourse, and the language of political protest, Paul Barrett argues that Canadian multiculturalism uniquely enables black diasporic writers to transform national literature and identity. These writers seize upon the ambiguities and tensions within Canadian discourses of nation to rewrite the nation from a black, diasporic perspective, converting exclusion from the national discourse into the impetus for their creative endeavours. Within this context, Barrett suggests, debates over who counts as Canadian, the limits of tolerance, and the breaking points of Canadian multiculturalism serve not as signs of multiculturalism’s failure but as proof of both its vitality and of the unique challenges that black writing in Canada poses to multicultural politics and the nation itself.

Based on first-hand historical materials, this book explores the various aspects of literary communication during the Song Dynasty in China. The book investigates the single-channel dissemination of poetry and ci works, the dissemination of literary collections, the dissemination through wall inscriptions, the oral dissemination of Song ci, the remuneration and commercialization of literature in the Song Dynasty, the paths to fame for Song writers, the non-literary factors in the dissemination of literature and the dissemination of literary works through paintings and songs. The author provides insights into the six major questions in the study of literary communication: Who disseminates, where, how, what, to whom and the effects of dissemination. The author also seeks to provide detailed answers to the following questions. What was the role of female singers in both domestic and official entertainment? What were the costs and prices of the books? Who paid the authors? What methods did writers use to gain fame and social recognition? This work will be essential reading for scholars and students of Chinese studies, communication studies and media and cultural studies.

This collection of essays examines how the paratextual apparatus of medieval manuscripts both inscribes and expresses power relations between the producers and consumers of knowledge in this important period of intellectual history. It seeks to define which paratextual features – annotations, commentaries, corrections, glosses, images, prologues, rubrics, and titles – are common to manuscripts from different branches of medieval knowledge and how they function in any particular discipline. It reveals how these visual expressions of power that organize and compile thought on the written page are consciously applied, negotiated or resisted by authors, scribes, artists, patrons and readers. This collection, which brings together scholars from the history of the book, law, science, medicine, literature, art, philosophy and music, interrogates the role played by paratexts in establishing authority, constructing bodies of knowledge, promoting education, shaping reader response, and preserving or subverting tradition in medieval manuscript culture.

An engaging, encyclopedic account of the material world of early modern Britain as told through a unique collection of dated objects The period from 1500 to 1800 in England was one of extraordinary social transformations, many having to do with the way time itself was understood, measured, and recorded. Through a focused exploration of an extensive private collection of fine and decorative artworks, this beautifully designed volume explores that theme and the variety of ways that individual notions of time and mortality shifted. The feature uniting these more than 450 varied objects is that each one bears a specific date, which marks a significant moment—for reasons personal or professional, religious or secular, private or public. From paintings to porringers, teapots to tape measures, the objects—and the stories they tell—offer a vivid sense of the lived experience of time, while providing a sweeping survey of the material world of early modern Britain.