Twelve Days Of Faery

King Markon of Montalier is at the end of his tether. His son, Prince Parrin, is afflicted with a rather nasty curse that slaughters, maims, or brutally attacks any woman with whom he so much as flirts. After the rumour that sweeps around the kingdom, promising that any woman breaking the ‘curse’ will be eligible to marry the prince, there is no shortage of willing volunteers. Unfortunately, there is also no shortage of bodies piling up. Markon needs to do something, but what? Can a visiting enchantress from Avernse help, or is she simply another accident waiting to happen? And will Markon be able to give her up to his son if she does break the curse?

King Markon of Montalier is at the end of his tether. His son is afflicted with a curse that slaughters, maims, or brutally attacks any woman around him. When a rumour spreads that any woman breaking the 'curse' will marry the prince, there is no shortage of willing volunteers. There is also no shortage of bodies piling up...

A young woman's true love sends her extravagant gifts on each of the twelve days of Christmas. Lyrics only.

Carnival and Literature in Early Modern England explores the elite and popular festive materials appropriated by authors during the English Renaissance in a wide range of dramatic and non-dramatic texts. Although historical records of rural, urban, and courtly seasonal customs in early modern England exist only in fragmentary form, Jennifer Vaught traces the sustained impact of festivals and rituals on the plays and poetry of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers. She focuses on the diverse ways in which Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Dekker, Jonson, Milton and Herrick incorporated the carnivalesque in their works. Further, she demonstrates how these early modern texts were used-and misused-by later writers, performers, and inventors of spectacles, notably Mardi Gras krewes organizing parades in the American Deep South. The works featured here often highlight violent conflicts between individuals of different ranks, ethnicities, and religions, which the author argues reflect the social realities of the time. These Renaissance writers responded to republican, egalitarian notions of liberty for the populace with radical support, ambivalence, or conservative opposition. Ultimately, the vital, folkloric dimension of these plays and poems challenges the notion that canonical works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries belong only to 'high' and not to 'low' culture.

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is among the most important literary products of the Elizabethan age, and the vast sweep of its moral, political and social concerns tells us more about the age than any other work. This volume, first published in 1989, offers detailed readings of each of the poem’s seven books, along with introductory chapters on Spenser’s career, and the roots of the poem in the English and continental traditions. Humphrey Tonkin pays particular attention to the work’s political and cultural role and its contribution to the development of Elizabethan ideology. A comprehensive analysis, this reissue will be of particular value to literature students and academics alike.