Alan Sinfield

William Shakespeare

Paul Prescott

Hamlet

Explores how the characters in Oscar Wilde's plays, though not specifically gay, epitomize today's image of the effeminate male, how they relate to British theatrical fops and other characters since early modern times, how the representation of same-sex passion was altered by Wilde's expose and trial as a homosexual, and how the stereotype of the gay man became established in the 20th century. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde, and the Queer Moment

The Wilde Century

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Textual Practice 10.3

Jonathan Dollimore

The plays of John Webster are read and seen more widely today than at any time since they were written - provoking much disagreement in the process. The continuing debate about his political, religious and philosophical attitudes, his formal skills and the importance of his plays for understanding the changing culture in which they were written, make Webster the most controversial of all Jacobean dramatists. This volume includes freshly collated, fully annotated and cross-referenced texts of his three best-known plays, together with introductions and a useful critical bibliography.

The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, The Devil's Law Case

The Selected Plays of John Webster

This book argues that hierarchies in interpersonal relations are inextricably linked to the main power differentials of our social and political life (gender, class, age, and race); therefore it is not surprising that they govern our psychic lives. Recent writing enables an exploration of their positive potential, especially in fantasy, as well as their danger. The book focuses on the writing of the last thirty years, revisiting also Whitman, Wilde, Mann, Forster, and Genet, and reassessing the very idea of a gay canon.

On Sexuality and Power

Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain is a landmark work in contemporary literary and cultural analysis. It offers a provocative and brilliant account of political change since 1945 and how such change shaped the cultural output of our time. It also looks at how and when literature intersects with other cultural forms - including jazz and rock music, television, journalism, commercial and "mass" cultures - and the growth of American cultural dominance. This edition includes a new foreword by the author.

Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain

Lindsay Smith

The split between national and popular interests is examined through an analysis of Branagh's 'multicultural' Much Ado - 'a Shakespeare film for the world' and analysis of other popular works including Cocteau, Woolf and Neil Jordan's.

Textual Practice

Lindsay Deputy Editor: Smith

Jean US Associate Editor: Howard

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Volume 9

This intriguing, authoritative book tracks stage representations of lesbians and gay men from Oscar Wilde to the present day and examines scores of British and American plays and playwrights, including works by Wilde, Maugham, Coward, Hellman, O'Neill, Le Roi Jones, and Joe Orton.

Lesbian and Gay Theatre in the Twentieth Century

Out on Stage

Following on from a first publication that generated massive wide-spread debates, Cultural Politics - Queer Reading is a bold and enduring study on the future of critical theory and the role of gender, ethnic and cultures within academic literary studies. An illuminating new introduction, written for this edition, revisits the book's agenda for a new form of cultural critique and a truly political lesbian and gay studies and Sinfield renews his call for an 'Englit' that incorporates ongoing study of the cultures of ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Challenging the assumptions that have shaped the study of English literature, Sinfield engages provocatively with topics such as: · the gendering of literary culture · the sexual politics of psychoanalysis during the Cold War · the history of cultural materialism and discusses principal figures such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Arthur Miller, Holly Hughes, Audre Lorde and Jeanette Winterson. This is a broadly influential investigation of the principles and practice that may form dissident reading, and a compelling argument for intellectual allegiances beyond the academy.

Cultural Politics-- Queer Reading

Macbeth, William Shakespeare

Alastair Davies

From Angus Wilson to Pat Barker and Salman Rushdie, British Culture of the Post-War is an ideal starting point for those studying cultural developments in Britain of recent years. Chapters on individual people and art forms give a clear and concise overview of the progression of different genres. They also discuss the wider issues of Britain's relationship with America and Europe, and the idea of Britishness. Each section is introduced with a short discussion of the major historical events of the period. Read as a whole, British Culture of the Postwar will give students a comprehensive introduction to this turbulent and exciting period, and a greater understanding of the cultural production arising from it.

An Introduction to Literature and Society 1945-1999

British Culture of the Post-War

Sinfield argues that ideas of gayness are becoming more complicated as gays are vilified over AIDS, courted as consumers spending the pink pound, and urged to be queer and/or bisexual. He also examines how gay identity continues to develop.

Gay and After

The hardline, uncompromising theology preached by the English Church in the 16th and 17th Centuries had disturbing effects on the literature of the period. This study, originally published in 1983, assesses the importance of the prevailing religious climate to the work of several major writers, both in and out of sympathy with the contemporary protestantism. It is argued that the accepted view of the period as essentially 'Christian-Humanist' obscures the harsher aspects of a Calvinism which throws into relief the agonies of a writer like Donne, the acceptances of one like George Herbert. Many writers rejected more or less explicitly the Christian dogma, through the heroic assertion of human potential in Shakespearean and other dramatic characters, the nihilism of Marlowe, or the secular rationalism of Bacon and Hobbes. Milton is central to this complex weft of belief and rejection, piety and atheism, acceptance of predestination and determination to accept fate, that characterises the period. Finally, Sinfield shows how this protestantism disintegrated under the strain of internal contradictions and external pressures, and in the process helped to stimulate secularism. In this original and clearly written book, scholarship is deployed unobstrusively to place many major works in an unaccustomed and stimulating perspective.

Literature in Protestant England, 1560-1660 (Routledge Revivals)

Part of a series of books concerned with modern critical theory and its effect on current approaches to the study of literature. This particular book looks at Shakespeare's "Macbeth" by a series of 12 articles by authors such as Marilyn French, Peter Stallybrass and Sigmund Freud.

Was Shakespeare gay? Is The Merchant of Venice anti-Semitic? How does mainstream reading differ from that of subcultural groups? In this lively and readable book, Alan Sinfield challenges the assumptions of English literature and investigates the principles and practices that may inform lesbian and gay reading.

Cultural Politics--Queer Reading

Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality is a powerful reassessment of cultural materialism as a way of understanding textuality, history and culture, by one of the founding figures of this critical movement. Alan Sinfield examines cultural materialism both as a body of ongoing argument and as it informs particular works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, especially in relation to sexuality in early-modern England and queer theory. The book has several interlocking preoccupations: theories of textuality and reading the political location of Shakespearean plays and the organisation of literary culture today the operation of state power in the early-modern period and the scope for dissidence the sex/gender system in that period and the application of queer theory in history. These preoccupations are explored in and around a range of works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Throughout the book Sinfield re-presents cultural materialism, framing it not as a set of propositions, as has often been done, but as a cluster of unresolved problems. His brilliant, lucid and committed readings demonstrate that the ‘unfinished business’ of cultural materialism - and Sinfield’s work in particular - will long continue to produce new questions and challenges for the fields of Shakespeare and Renaissance Studies.

Alan Sinfield

About

Books

Join the club