Name: The Country House in English Renaissance Poetry
Brand: William Alexander McClung
Price: 23.95 USD
Availability: InStock

William Alexander McClung

The Country House in English Renaissance Poetry

$23.95

The Country House in English Renaissance Poetry explores a unique literary genre that emerged during the seventeenth century, celebrating the ideals of the English manor estate while critiquing the societal shifts that threatened its values. These poems, written by figures such as Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, Robert Herrick, and Thomas Carew, praise the virtues of traditional manorial life—hospitality, responsibility, and order—set against the backdrop of expansive and ostentatious estates built by political elites of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. By juxtaposing the modest yet harmonious homes of families like the Sidneys of Penshurst against the grandiose mansions of newly affluent courtiers, these works reflect a nostalgia for a simpler, more virtuous era, tied to a hierarchical and agrarian ideal.

The book examines the classical and social influences on the genre, tracing its roots to Roman poets like Martial and its connections to the myth of the Golden Age. It also delves into the architectural and societal contexts of the period, demonstrating how poets critiqued modern extravagance and upheld the moral prestige of country living. Through a detailed analysis of seminal works, the study reveals how these poets used the country house as both a symbol of cultural stability and a stage for their critiques of contemporary life, blending aesthetic appreciation with social commentary. The genre, deeply intertwined with notions of labor, productivity, and divine order, serves as a lens through which to view the changing dynamics of seventeenth-century England.

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 1977.

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Willard Farnham

The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy

$32.95

The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy explores the evolution of tragedy from its medieval foundations to its dramatic culmination on the Elizabethan stage, emphasizing the continuity of a "tragic spirit" rooted in Gothic and classical traditions. By analyzing non-dramatic works like Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, the book reveals how medieval narratives, with their moral reflections and focus on human suffering, influenced the themes and structures of Elizabethan stage tragedies. The author argues that while Elizabethan tragedy absorbed elements of Greco-Roman culture, it retained the moral and philosophical depth of its medieval heritage, blending classical precision with Gothic introspection. This work offers a compelling analysis of how these traditions intersected to shape one of the most enduring and profound forms of artistic expression.

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 1936.

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Robert Tracy

Trollope's Later Novels

$29.95

Trollope’s Later Novels by Robert Tracy challenges long-standing assumptions about Anthony Trollope’s place in Victorian literature, presenting him not as a genial but second-rate craftsman, but as a novelist of considerable technical sophistication and moral seriousness. Tracy argues that Trollope’s later works, especially those of the 1870s, reveal a writer who had reached full artistic maturity. Far from being clumsy or rambling, these novels demonstrate a unity of form and function in which literary style and structure embody a coherent moral theory about society, values, and human conduct.

Organized in two parts, the study first situates Trollope’s narrative techniques and social vision within the broader debates about form and order, then provides detailed readings of individual works, from Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite and The Way We Live Now to the late experimental fictions The Fixed Period and Mr. Scarborough’s Family. Tracy shows how Trollope’s multiple-plot structures, rhetorical choices, and social doctrines interweave to create fiction of remarkable subtlety, even when the author himself dismissed his art as mere craft. By reframing Trollope’s achievement, Trollope’s Later Novels invites readers and scholars alike to reconsider one of the most prolific Victorian writers as a central figure in the development of the English novel, whose best work exemplifies the unity of art and social vision that Wilde once described as the shared “canons” of both literature and society.

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 1978.

Cover image for Trollope's Later Novels, isbn: 9780520316423

Bonnie S. McDougall

Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979

$23.95

The essays in this volume constitute an exceptionally broad and inclusive account of Chinese literature and performing arts since 1949. Extending beyond fiction to poetry and drama, and covering song, opera, and film as well, these essays reveal a more lively and varied cultural life than that disclosed by studies confined to fiction and literary politics.

Rather than stopping at the assumption that art reflects Party or government policy, the essays uncover the traditional roots of popular literature and performing art by employing literary and artistic methods of analysis. While often lacking in appeal to Western audiences, these popular arts nonetheless have their own artistic validity and convey complex meanings to broadly based Chinese audiences.

The materials and analyses presented here have social as well as cultural relevance. Variety and change rather than monolithic uniformity have characterized post-1949 cultural bureaucracies, writers, performers, and audiences.
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 1984.

Cover image for Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979, isbn: 9780520378360

Joanna Frueh

Erotic Faculties

$23.95

The erotic and the intellectual come together to create a new kind of criticism in the lushly written work of Joanna Frueh. Addressing sexuality in ways that are usually hidden or left unsaid, Frueh—a noted performance artist and art historian—explores subjects such as aging, beauty, love, sex, pleasure, contemporary art, and the body as a site and vehicle of knowledge. Frueh's language is explicit, graphic, fragmented. She assumes multiple voices: those of lover, prophet, daughter, mythmaker, art critic, activist, and bleeding heart. What results is an utterly original narrative that frees us from the false objectivity of traditional critical discourse and affirms the erotic as a way to ease human suffering. Through personal reflection, parody, autobiography, and poetry, Frueh shows us what it means to perform criticism, to personalize critical thinking. Rejecting postmodern, deconstructed prose, she recuperates the sentimental, proudly asserts a romantic viewpoint, and disrupts academic and feminist conventions. Erotic Faculties seeks to free the power of our unutilized erotic faculties and to expand the possibilities of criticism; it is a wild ride and a consummate pleasure. 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 1996.

Cover image for Erotic Faculties, isbn: 9780520319448

John M. Ellis

The Theory of Literary Criticism

$23.95

The Theory of Literary Criticism: A Logical Analysis by John M. Ellis argues that modern debates about “what criticism should do” have stagnated since the mid-century syntheses, breeding a climate of “wise eclecticism” that shrinks theory’s scope to ad-hoc judgment. Ellis contends this posture is a practical stopgap, not a theory: if critics switch methods “case by case,” theory must still explain which distinctions justify those switches. He traces the impasse to two habits: (1) reform-driven polemics that keep questions at slogan level (“study the text itself” vs. “study its context”) and (2) an unexamined **reference theory of meaning** (language = names for things), which either declares non-referential critical claims meaningless (à la logical positivism) or mystifies them as beyond analysis. Both routes, he argues, block principled criteria for interpretation and evaluation.

Ellis proposes recentering literary theory on logical and conceptual analysis, drawing on Wittgenstein rather than importing ready-made dogma. The practical method: begin with What distinction is this claim trying to make?”; surface the implied contrasts and purposes; then test whether the opposed positions genuinely conflict (often they don’t). Examples—“read literature as literature,” “a text is a social document”—only become meaningful once their operative contrasts (e.g., which contextual uses, which exclusions) are specified. The payoff is a theory that (a) analyzes kinds of critical statements without reducing them to reference, (b) provides rules of use rather than rigid verifications, and (c) rebuilds shared criteria where current eclecticism offers only “sound judgment.”

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 1974.

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Kathryn J. Gutzwiller

Poetic Garlands

$68.95

Epigrams, the briefest of Greek poetic forms, had a strong appeal for readers of the Hellenistic period (323-31 B.C.). One of the most characteristic literary forms of the era, the epigram, unlike any other ancient or classical form of poetry, was not only composed for public recitation but was also collected in books intended for private reading. Brief and concise, concerned with the personal and the particular, the epigram emerged in the Hellenistic period as a sophisticated literary form that evinces the period's aesthetic preference for the miniature, the intricate, and the fragmented.

Kathryn Gutzwiller offers the first full-length literary study of these important poems by studying the epigrams within the context of the poetry books in which they were originally collected. Drawing upon ancient sources as well as recent papyrological discoveries, Gutzwiller reconstructs the nature of Hellenistic epigram books and interprets individual poems as if they remained part of their original collections. This approach results in illuminating and original readings of many major poets, and demonstrates that individual epigrammatists were differentiated by gender, ethnicity, class status, and philosophical views. In an important final chapter, Gutzwiller reconstructs much of the poetic structure of Meleager's Garland, an ancient anthology of Hellenistic epigrams.

Epigrams, the briefest of Greek poetic forms, had a strong appeal for readers of the Hellenistic period (323-31 B.C.). One of the most characteristic literary forms of the era, the epigram, unlike any other ancient or classical form of poetry, was not onl

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Anne E. Goldman

Take My Word

$28.95

In an innovative critique of traditional approaches to autobiography, Anne E. Goldman convincingly demonstrates that ethnic women can and do speak for themselves, even in the most unlikely contexts. Citing a wide variety of nontraditional texts—including the cookbooks of Nuevo Mexicanas, African American memoirs of midwifery and healing, and Jewish women's histories of the garment industry—Goldman illustrates how American women have asserted their ethnic identities and made their voices heard over and sometimes against the interests of publishers, editors, and readers. While the dominant culture has interpreted works of ethnic literature as representative of a people rather than an individual, the working women of this study insist upon their own agency in narrating rich and complicated self-portraits.

In an innovative critique of traditional approaches to autobiography, Anne E. Goldman convincingly demonstrates that ethnic women can and do speak for themselves, even in the most unlikely contexts. Citing a wide variety of nontraditional texts—including

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James Gindin

Postwar British Fiction

$23.95

Postwar British Fiction: New Accents and Attitudes by James Gindin offers the first comprehensive account of the striking changes in British literature after 1945. Situating novelists, dramatists, and critics in the turbulence of postwar society, Gindin charts how writers from Alan Sillitoe and Kingsley Amis to Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, and William Golding grappled with class realignments, political disillusionment, and the search for identity. Moving across fiction and drama, the book uncovers how satire, existential uncertainty, and comic understatement became vehicles for articulating the contradictions of a rapidly changing Britain.

Attentive to both individual artistry and shared cultural conditions, Gindin demonstrates that “angry young men” and other postwar voices were neither isolated nor opportunistic, but part of a coherent shift toward moral inquiry, iconoclasm, and the affirmation of ordinary life. Postwar British Fiction remains a foundational study for scholars of twentieth-century literature, cultural history, and theater, showing how new tones, techniques, and attitudes transformed the novel and stage into key sites for exploring social fracture and renewal.

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 1962.

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John Plotz

The Crowd

$18.95

Between 1800 and 1850, political demonstrations and the tumult of a ballooning street life not only brought novel kinds of crowds onto the streets of London, but also fundamentally changed British ideas about public and private space. The Crowd sets out to demonstrate the influence of these new crowds, riots, and demonstrations on the period's literature. John Plotz offers compelling readings of works by Thomas De Quincey, Thomas Carlyle, William Wordsworth, Maria Edgeworth, and Charlotte Bronte, arguing that new "representative" crowds became a potent rival for the representational claims of literary texts themselves. As rivals in representation, these crowds triggered important changes not simply in how these authors depicted crowds, but in their notions of public life and privacy in general.

The Crowd is the first book devoted to an analysis of crowds in British literature. In addition to this being a noteworthy and innovative contribution to literary criticism, it addresses ongoing debates in political theory on the nature of the public-political realm and offers a new reading of the contested public discourses of class, nation, and gender. In the end, it provides a sophisticated and rich analysis of an important facet of the beginning of the modern age.

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Dwight F. Reynolds

Interpreting the Self

$34.95

Autobiography is a literary genre which Western scholarship has ascribed mostly to Europe and the West. Countering this assessment and presenting many little-known texts, this comprehensive work demonstrates the existence of a flourishing tradition in Arabic autobiography. Interpreting the Self discusses nearly one hundred Arabic autobiographical texts and presents thirteen selections in translation. The authors of these autobiographies represent an astonishing variety of geographical areas, occupations, and religious affiliations. This pioneering study explores the origins, historical development, and distinctive characteristics of autobiography in the Arabic tradition, drawing from texts written between the ninth and nineteenth centuries c.e.

This volume consists of two parts: a general study rethinking the place of autobiography in the Arabic tradition, and the translated texts. Part one demonstrates that there are far more Arabic autobiographical texts than previously recognized by modern scholars and shows that these texts represent an established and—especially in the Middle Ages—well-known category of literary production. The thirteen translated texts in part two are drawn from the full one-thousand-year period covered by this survey and represent a variety of styles. Each text is preceded by a brief introduction guiding the reader to specific features in the text and providing general background information about the author. The volume also contains an annotated bibliography of 130 premodern Arabic autobiographical texts.

In addition to presenting much little-known material, this volume revisits current understandings of autobiographical writing and helps create an important cross-cultural comparative framework for studying the genre.

Autobiography is a literary genre which Western scholarship has ascribed mostly to Europe and the West. Countering this assessment and presenting many little-known texts, this comprehensive work demonstrates the existence of a flourishing tradition in Ara

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William A Jr Lyell

Lu Hsun's Vision of Reality

$29.95

Lu Hsün’s Vision of Reality delves into the revolutionary shifts in modern Chinese fiction during the early 20th century, spotlighting Lu Hsün (pen name of Chou Shu-jen) as a pioneering figure in the short story genre. His seminal collections, Call to Arms (1923) and Wandering (1926), are celebrated as enduring classics, encapsulating the socio-political upheavals of the time. The book contextualizes Lu Hsün’s works within the rich cultural and historical backdrop of his hometown, Shaohsing, a city renowned for its clever inhabitants and steeped in memories of rebellion and resilience. Through vivid depictions of Shaohsing’s traditions, landscapes, and the remnants of the Taiping Rebellion, the study connects Lu Hsün’s literary vision to his roots, offering readers insights into the shaping of his critical perspective on Chinese society.

This comprehensive introduction serves both seasoned scholars and new readers, balancing an accessible narrative with in-depth analysis of Lu Hsün’s stories and their broader implications. It combines personal history, cultural critique, and literary examination, illustrating how Lu Hsün’s upbringing in a storied yet turbulent environment influenced his masterful storytelling and unflinching critique of Chinese tradition. Through translations, detailed descriptions, and scholarly commentary, the book invites readers to appreciate the depth of Lu Hsün’s contributions to modern Chinese literature and the universal themes embedded in his tales of human struggle and societal change.

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 1976.

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Viola L. Hagopian

Italian Ars Nova Music

$23.95

The Italian Ars Nova Music: A Bibliographic Guide to Modern Editions and Related Literature is an essential resource for scholars, students, and enthusiasts of Italian Trecento music. This revised and expanded second edition reflects the vibrant and ongoing exploration of fourteenth-century Italian music, building on decades of meticulous scholarship. Originally compiled by Viola Hagopian, this guide has become a cornerstone in musicology, offering a comprehensive classification and concise descriptions of the wealth of materials related to this transformative period in music history.

The Italian Ars Nova, marked by its intricate melodic structures and the rise of the madrigal, remains a field of dynamic research, as new manuscripts and interpretations continue to emerge. With significant contributions from international scholars and institutions like the Centro di Studi sull'Ars Nova Italiana del Trecento, this volume contextualizes the music within its cultural and historical framework. This edition not only revisits earlier discoveries but also incorporates new findings, making it a crucial tool for navigating the rich and ever-expanding scholarship on this period.

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 1973.

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Guanlong Cao

The Attic

$17.95

Novelist Guanlong Cao's autobiographical account of growing up in urban Shanghai affords a rare glimpse into daily life during the forty turbulent years following the Communist Revolution. Forced to the bottom of Chinese society as "class enemies," Cao's family eked out a meager existence in a cramped attic. The details of their day-to-day existence—the endless quest for enough food, its preparation, Cao's schooling and friends, the stirrings of sexual desire, his dreams and fantasies—are brought brilliantly to life in spare yet evocative prose. The memoir illuminates a world largely unknown to Westerners, one where human pettiness, cruelty, joy, and tenderness play themselves out against a backdrop of political upheaval and material scarcity.

Reminiscent of the concise style of classical Chinese memoirs, Cao's lean, elegant prose heightens the emotional intensity of his story. Perceptive and humorous, his voice is deeply original. It is a voice that demands to be heard—for the historical moment it captures as well as for the personal revelations it distills.

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Paula M. L. Moya

Reclaiming Identity

$36.95

"Identity" is one of the most hotly debated topics in literary theory and cultural studies. This bold and groundbreaking collection of ten essays argues that identity is not just socially constructed but has real epistemic and political consequences for how people experience the world. Advocating a "postpositivist realist" approach to identity, the essays examine the ways in which theory, politics, and activism clash with or complement each other, providing an alternative to the widely influential postmodernist understandings of identity. Although theoretical in orientation, this dynamic collection deals with specific social groups—Chicanas/os, African Americans, gay men and lesbians, Asian Americans, and others—and concrete social issues directly related to race, ethnicity, sexuality, epistemology, and political resistance.

Satya Mohanty's brilliant exegesis of Toni Morrison's Beloved serves as a launching pad for the collection. The essays that follow, written by prominent and up-and-coming scholars, address a range of topics—from the writings of Cherrie Moraga, Franz Fanon, Joy Kogawa, and Michael Nava to the controversy surrounding racial program housing on college campuses—and work toward a truly interdisciplinary approach to identity.

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John Dryden

The Works of John Dryden, Volume V

$95.00

Volumes V and VI concern Dryden's most involved labor: the complete translation of Virgil into English. Volume V contains The Pastorals and The Georgics in their entirety; the first six books of The Aeneid is contained as well.

Volumes V and VI concern Dryden's most involved labor: the complete translation of Virgil into English. Volume V contains The Pastorals and The Georgics in their entirety; the first six books of The Aeneid is contained as well.

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Ruth Murray Underhill

Singing for Power

$23.95

Ruth Murray Underhill’s Singing for Power is a pioneering exploration of the song magic of the Papago (now Tohono O’odham) people of southern Arizona. Drawing on fourteen months of immersive fieldwork in the 1930s, Underhill presents translations of ritual songs and orations that animate Papago life—from rainmaking and planting to hunting, war, and healing. Through these songs, she demonstrates how speech and rhythm were not mere expressions but acts of power, vividly describing desired events to bring them into being. Her translations are accompanied by careful cultural context, offering insight into the ways the Papago understood rain, animals, crops, and communal bonds as interwoven with the supernatural.

At once ethnography, poetry, and historical record, Singing for Power preserves ceremonies and oral traditions that were already in transition at the time of Underhill’s visits. From the “Papago Bible” recited at winter solstice to the cactus wine rituals that called down the rains, the book captures a worldview where song was the most valuable possession a person could hold. Underhill’s sensitivity to both the artistry and the practical force of these performances situates the work as a classic in anthropology and Native American studies, one that continues to resonate with scholars of ritual, oral tradition, and the desert Southwest.

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 1938.

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Richard Lehan

The City in Literature

$34.95

This sweeping literary encounter with the Western idea of the city moves from the early novel in England to the apocalyptic cityscapes of Thomas Pynchon. Along the way, Richard Lehan gathers a rich entourage that includes Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Bram Stoker, Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Raymond Chandler. The European city is read against the decline of feudalism and the rise of empire and totalitarianism; the American city against the phenomenon of the wilderness, the frontier, and the rise of the megalopolis and the decentered, discontinuous city that followed.

Throughout this book, Lehan pursues a dialectic of order and disorder, of cities seeking to impose their presence on the surrounding chaos. Rooted in Enlightenment yearnings for reason, his journey goes from east to west, from Europe to America. In the United States, the movement is also westward and terminates in Los Angeles, a kind of land's end of the imagination, in Lehan's words. He charts a narrative continuum full of constructs that "represent" a cycle of hope and despair, of historical optimism and pessimism.

Lehan presents sharply etched portrayals of the correlation between rationalism and capitalism; of the rise of the city, the decline of the landed estate, and the formation of the gothic; and of the emergence of the city and the appearance of other genres such as detective narrative and fantasy literature. He also mines disciplines such as urban studies, architecture, economics, and philosophy, uncovering material that makes his study a lively read not only for those interested in literature, but for anyone intrigued by the meanings and mysteries of urban life.

This sweeping literary encounter with the Western idea of the city moves from the early novel in England to the apocalyptic cityscapes of Thomas Pynchon. Along the way, Richard Lehan gathers a rich entourage that includes Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Em

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Richard Harter Fogle

The Idea of Coleridge's Criticism

$23.95

The Idea of Coleridge's Criticism explores the profound, often polarizing legacy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a literary critic, whose influence continues to resonate in modern thought. This study examines the richness and complexity of Coleridge's critical theories, particularly his groundbreaking ideas on imagination, organic unity, and the interplay between form and content in poetry. It navigates the spectrum of scholarly opinions, from skepticism over his philosophical debts to the Germans to admiration for his psychological insights and practical criticism. By analyzing his contributions within the broader context of Romanticism and Western criticism, this book emphasizes Coleridge's role as a thinker who unified poetic theory, philosophy, and literary practice in ways that shaped generations of critical discourse.

With a focus on the inherent unity of Coleridge's critical vision, the book contends that his theories extend beyond the fragmentary and eclectic criticisms often attributed to him. It delves into his synthesis of Romantic idealism and systematic analysis, showcasing his ability to reconcile opposites—subject and object, imagination and reason—within an organic framework. Highlighting his enduring relevance, the book underscores how Coleridge's belief in the logic and value of imaginative language provided a compelling defense against the encroachment of scientific positivism in literature. Ultimately, this study positions Coleridge not only as a Romantic theorist or pioneer of depth psychology but as a towering figure whose critical insights retain permanent significance for literary interpretation and appreciation.

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 1962.

Cover image for The Idea of Coleridge's Criticism, isbn: 9780520327498

Joseph Mileck

Hermann Hesse

$31.95

"A critical biography far surpassing the previous ones." --Times Higher Education Supplement "There are to be sure many writers whose biographies are more interesting than their fiction but Hesse is not one of these. He led a long and sometimes eventful life with marital tensions, traveL controversy, crises, even some thoughts of suicide and a period of time as a student in a home for retarded and unmanageable. In addition, there was his search which led him through the culture and arts of West and East, his views of politics and society, of psychology and philosophy. The difference between Hesse and other writers is that virtually every shred and patch of his life was brought into his writing, his fiction particularly. 'He had to write about himself and there is little of what he wrote that is not confessional in form and therapeutic in function.' Autobiography is the very matter of his work. Mileck's contribution is to extend and fill out the evidence of his life, his psychoanalysis, his drive toward self-realization which was the very engine of his being, to show the raw material and thus to invite readers to see how it was transmuted, transfigured, fantasized, poeticized, symbolized." --Los Angeles Times "Hesse was a prolific author for some 60 years, and his mind drew everything it contemplated into his private wars between flesh and spirit. objectivity and subjectivity, the longings for society and isolation. No one is better qualified to disentangle this abundance than Mileck, compiler of the huge two-volume Hesse bibliography. For completeness, then, no biography in English compares." --Kirkus Reviews "Mileck provides his own translations of the German quotations from Hesse's works, and the eight interpretive chapters are thoroughly indexed, making the work readily accessible to researchers and students concerned with specific Hesse questions and themes. This very readable book also contains a number of exceptional photographs, which, together with Mileck's fervor and understanding of the author, help create a living image of Hesse the man and the artist." --Choice "Professor Mileck . .. brings to his task an acquaintanceship with Hesse's published and unpublished writings .. . which borders on omniscience. This is a literary biography which concentrates on the works and looks at the life of its subject briefly and always in relation to its involvement with the works . . . [This] is true scholarship, which does not make the book less readable and accessible to the general public. . . . a solid and valuable book which should make it easier . . . to bring [Hesse] back into the orbit of serious appreciation in the English-speaking world." --Books and Bookmen

"A critical biography far surpassing the previous ones." --Times Higher Education Supplement "There are to be sure many writers whose biographies are more interesting than their fiction but Hesse is not one of these. He led a long and sometimes eventful

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John E. Jordan

De Quincey to Wordsworth

$29.95

De Quincey to Wordsworth: A Biography of a Relationship delves into the dynamic and complex connection between Thomas De Quincey and William Wordsworth, chronicled through decades of revealing correspondence. This biography goes beyond the letters themselves, placing them within the broader context of their lives and interactions. It explores De Quincey's evolution from a nature-loving Oxford dropout to a celebrated master of English prose, touching upon his struggles with opium addiction, financial instability, and literary aspirations. Wordsworth emerges not just as a correspondent but as a significant influence on De Quincey's life and work, shaping his intellectual and personal journey.

Through meticulous chronological organization and editorial commentary, this book presents a rich narrative of two remarkable figures and their intertwining lives. By examining these letters alongside biographical fragments, gossip, and hearsay, readers gain a vivid glimpse into their human complexities. Moments of humor, pathos, and tragedy reveal the profound impact they had on one another, offering a compelling study of their relationship and its influence on their art. This work serves as both a testament to their creativity and an intimate portrayal of their shared and individual struggles.

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 1963.

Cover image for De Quincey to Wordsworth, isbn: 9780520326316

John Dryden

The Works of John Dryden, Volume III

$95.00

This volume contains the poems of Dryden extending from1685 to 1692. Along with the poems of Dryden and associated extensive commentaries and textual notes from the editors, this volume contains the dramatic prologues and epilogues Dryden wrote for the plays of other writers from this period of time.

This volume contains the poems of Dryden extending from1685 to 1692. Along with the poems of Dryden and associated extensive commentaries and textual notes from the editors, this volume contains the dramatic prologues and epilogues Dryden wrote for the pl

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John J. Winkler

Auctor and Actor

$23.95

Addressed to readers of modern literature as well as to those interested in Greco-Roman literature and in religious history, Auctor and Actor examines Apuleius's The Golden Ass as an early example of self-consciousness in narrative. Entering into the spirit of the novel's crafty playfulness, John J. Winkler carries the reader on a journey that is, like that of the hero Lucius, both entertaining and enlightening.

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 1986.

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Kenneth Burke

Language As Symbolic Action

$38.95

From the Preface: The title for this collection was the title of a course in literary criticism that I gave for many years at Bennington College. And much of the material presented here was used in that course. The title should serve well to convey the gist of these various pieces. For all of them are explicitly concerned with the attempt to define and track down the implications of the term "symbolic action," and to show how the marvels of literature and language look when considered form that point of view.

From the Preface: The title for this collection was the title of a course in literary criticism that I gave for many years at Bennington College. And much of the material presented here was used in that course. The title should serve well to convey the gi

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Leonard C. Pronko

The World of Jean Anouilh

$23.95

The World of Jean Anouilh by Leonard Cabell Pronko presents the French dramatist as one of the twentieth century’s most incisive playwrights, a writer whose enduring reputation rests on his exploration of moral compromise, political expediency, and the tension between purity and complicity. While Anouilh’s later works after 1960 tended toward whimsy or self-conscious mannerism, his major contributions remain the serious dramas of the 1940s and the bitter comedies of the postwar decade—*Antigone*, *Ardèle*, *L’Alouette*, and the late triumph *Becket*. These plays established him not as a boulevard entertainer but as a poet of the “dirty hands” dilemma: whether to plunge into the sordid world of politics and power, as Creon does, or to refuse altogether, like Antigone or Hugo, and risk irrelevance.

Pronko situates Anouilh’s achievement in a broader cultural and theatrical frame. U.S. audiences initially resisted his bleak vision and the French conventions of *ménage à trois* and anti-realist staging, but Off- and Off-Off-Broadway, alongside the theater of the absurd, created receptive spaces. Antigone, staged during the German Occupation, became a touchstone for audiences who read in it the conflict between collaboration and resistance, even if the playwright disavowed explicit politics. Becket confirmed Anouilh’s capacity for depth after lighter boulevard pieces, while the late plays repeatedly stage upstairs/downstairs contrasts between perfumed salons and grim kitchens, dramatizing class and moral divides. Throughout, Anouilh maintained that he sought only to entertain, yet the ethical gravitas of his work, its recurring dialectic of purity and compromise, belies this modest claim. For theater practitioners and scholars alike, Pronko’s study underscores why Anouilh’s core works—above all Antigone, Becket, and La Valse des toréadors—remain essential to modern repertoires.

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 1961.

Cover image for The World of Jean Anouilh, isbn: 9780520333413

Rosalie Colie

The Resources of Kind

$23.95

The Resources of Kind: Genre-Theory in the Renaissance, edited by Barbara K. Lewalski, presents the four Una’s Lectures delivered at Berkeley in 1972 by Rosalie Littell Colie, whose sudden death prevented their further expansion into the major study she had planned. Even in this form, the essays offer a landmark contribution to Renaissance literary history and critical theory. With Colie’s characteristic erudition and elegance, they emphasize the richness and flexibility of Renaissance genre, challenging the modern prejudice that genre constrains originality. Instead, she shows how genres act as frames of communication and metaphors for human understanding, shaping both literature and the apprehension of reality itself.

Colie identifies a central tension in Renaissance genre theory between the strict differentiation of kinds and the conception of literature as a totalizing paideia that could incorporate all knowledge. This tension opened the way for the elevation of “minor” or unconventional forms—emblems, epigrams, prose fiction, philosophical poems, dialogues—and for the invention of new forms like the essay, the picaresque novel, and the historical epic. Her lectures trace the assimilation of small forms into larger works and demonstrate how masterpieces such as Paradise Lost and King Lear achieve greatness through their encyclopedic blending of multiple genres, presenting the full range of human experience. Though unfinished, these lectures encapsulate Colie’s wide-ranging scholarship and her enduring influence, offering both new insights into Renaissance genre and a model of intellectual speculation that continues to shape the field.

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 1973.

Cover image for The Resources of Kind, isbn: 9780520334588

Robert S. Kinsman

The Darker Vision of the Renaissance

$29.95

The Darker Vision of the Renaissance explores political, literary, social, religious, medical, and artistic events between 1300 and 1670 that led beyond the bounds of reason into the nonrational, irrational, and suprarational phenomena of the European Renaissance. Robert S. Kinsman’s introduction examines Renaissance uses of ratio, “fancy” and “folly,” melancholy, anxietas, and alienation. Lynn White Jr. presents the essential thesis of the collection in his view that the years 1300–1650 constituted one of the most psychically disturbed eras ever in European history. The “world-alienation” of the period is analyzed by Donald R. Howard, illustrated by two poems of the late fourteenth century: Gawain and the Green Knight and Toilus and Criseyde. The flourishing of hermetic, magical, cabalistic, and astrological practices in the Renaissance is described by John G. Burke.

The gentleman and courtier’s physical and psychological tensions resulting from literal exile or from psychic alienation from his lesser fellows are investigated by Lauro Martines. An analysis of the “structures” of Renaissance mysticism is provided by Kees W. Bolle. Gilbert Reaney’s essay examines ratio as the basis for the “measured” music of the fourteenth century, against which the newer duple and triple rhythms that came into prominence in the later half of the century were assessed. An essay by Marc Bensimon concerns itself with Renaissance modes of perception—as illustrated in works of art, of literature, and of philosophic speculation—that seem shaped by primordial anxieties caused by the passing of time and the fear of death. The reflections of theological notions about the “dreadful hidden will of God” in such pieces as Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus are given full background and perceptive treatment by Paul R. Sellin. Robert Kinsman concludes with his study “Folly, Melancholy, and Madness: Shifting Styles of Medical Analysis and Treatment, 1450–1675.”

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 1974.

Cover image for The Darker Vision of the Renaissance, isbn: 9780520310032

Ann Vasaly

Representations

$34.95

Ann Vasaly introduces representation theory into the study of Ciceronian persuasion and contends that an understanding of milieu—social, political, topographical—is crucial to understanding Ciceronian oratory. As a genre uniquely dependent on an immediate interaction between author and audience, ancient oratory becomes performance art.

Vasaly investigates the way Cicero represented the contemporary physical world—places, topography, and monuments, both those seen and those merely mentioned—to his listeners and demonstrates how he used these representations to persuade. Her exceptionally well-written study deftly recaptures the immediacy of Cicero's oratory and makes a trenchant contribution to an important new area of inquiry in Classical Studies.

Ann Vasaly introduces representation theory into the study of Ciceronian persuasion and contends that an understanding of milieu—social, political, topographical—is crucial to understanding Ciceronian oratory. As a genre uniquely dependent on an immediate

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Ruzante

L'Anconitana

$28.95

In Italy Angelo Beolco, called Ruzante, is recognized as the most original of the Italian Renaissance dramatists. However, his plays are hardly known in English, mainly because few translators have been able to take on the Pavano dialect Ruzante employed for the character he played. With Nancy Dersofi's vigorous and faithful translation of L'Anconitana, presented opposite the authoritative version of the Italian text, Ruzante's most successful play is now available to English-speaking audiences for the first time.

In Italy Angelo Beolco, called Ruzante, is recognized as the most original of the Italian Renaissance dramatists. However, his plays are hardly known in English, mainly because few translators have been able to take on the Pavano dialect Ruzante employed

Cover image for L'Anconitana, isbn: 9780520914711

Edward H. Schafer

The Golden Peaches of Samarkand

$41.95

In the seventh century the kingdom of Samarkand sent formal gifts of fancy yellow peaches, large as goose eggs and with a color like gold, to the Chinese court at Ch'ang-an. What kind of fruit these golden peaches really were cannot now be guessed, but they have the glamour of mystery, and they symbolize all the exotic things longed for, and unknown things hoped for, by the people of the T'ang empire.

This book examines the exotics imported into China during the T'ang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907), and depicts their influence on Chinese life. Into the land during the three centuries of T'ang came the natives of almost every nation of Asia, all bringing exotic wares either as gifts or as goods to be sold. Ivory, rare woods, drugs, diamonds, magicians, dancing girls—the author covers all classes of unusual imports, their places of origin, their lore, their effort on costume, dwellings, diet, and on painting, sculpture, music, and poetry.

This book is not a statistical record of commercial imports and medieval trade, but rather a "humanistic essay, however material its subject matter."

In the seventh century the kingdom of Samarkand sent formal gifts of fancy yellow peaches, large as goose eggs and with a color like gold, to the Chinese court at Ch'ang-an. What kind of fruit these golden peaches really were cannot now be guessed, but th

Cover image for The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, isbn: 9780520341142

Hank Heifetz

For the Lord of the Animals-Poems from The Telugu

$23.95

For the Lord of the Animals: Poems from the Telugu offers an insightful translation of The Kalahastisvara Satakamu by the 16th-century poet Dhurjati, a prominent figure in the devotional poetry tradition of Andhra Pradesh. Set in the sacred temple town of Kalahasti, dedicated to the god Shiva, the work showcases Dhurjati's emotional devotion to Srikajahastisvara, the Lord of Kalahasti. Drawing from rich Shaivite legends, including the stories of a spider, snake, and elephant each offering their unique devotion to Shiva, the poems reveal deep philosophical reflections, personal meditations on life, sensuality, death, and divine intervention. The poet’s raw emotions, social commentary, and critique of authority, particularly kings and gurus, make the Satakamu a significant piece of Telugu literature that transcends mere religious worship and becomes a reflection of human struggle and self-examination.

The translation captures the essence of these devotional poems, often written in ornate, classical meters, by focusing on the meaning and emotional flow rather than rigid adherence to formal metrical patterns. By balancing Sanskrit and Telugu elements, the poems convey an interplay of elevated spiritual language and colloquial expressions, giving them a layered depth. Through these carefully crafted verses, Dhurjati’s poems not only offer praise to the god of Kalahasti but also engage in profound reflections on existence, societal structures, and the relationship between man and divinity. With this work, the reader is introduced to a unique blend of personal lyricism and devotional fervor, inviting both spiritual insight and a deeper understanding of the human condition.

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 1987.

Cover image for For the Lord of the Animals-Poems from The Telugu, isbn: 9780520335950

Giacomo Leopardi

Operette Morali

$38.95

This series is conceived as a library of bilingual editions of works chosen for their importance to Italian literature and to the international tradition of art and thought Italy has nurtured. In each volume an Italian text in an authoritative edition is paired with a new facing-page translation supplemented by explanatory notes and a selected bibliography. An introduction provides a historical and critical interpretation of the work. The scholars preparing these volumes hope through Biblioteca ltaliana to point a straight way to the Italian classics. GENERAL EDITOR: Louise George Clubb EDITORIAL BOARD Paul J. Alpers, Vittore Branca Gene Brucker, Fredi Chiappelli Phillip W. Damon, Robert M. Durling Gianfranco Folena, Lauro Martines Nicolas J. Perella

This series is conceived as a library of bilingual editions of works chosen for their importance to Italian literature and to the international tradition of art and thought Italy has nurtured. In each volume an Italian text in an authoritative edition is

Cover image for Operette Morali, isbn: 9780520341135

Irvin Ehrenpreis

Acts of Implication

$23.95

Acts of Implication argues that the best approach to the aesthetic value of much literature of the past is by way of the deliberate meaning—implicit or explicit—that the author invites the reader to share. Irvin Ehrenpreis shows that subtlety and indirection do not militate against the didacticism and lucid style we usually associate with writers in the Augustan tradition. In a group of simulating essays he examines how an eighteenth-century dramatist, an essayist, a poet, and a novelist imply meaning about politics, religion, and sexual passion, focusing on their concept of heroism to elaborate these themes. 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 1980.

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Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle

Loyola's Acts

$23.95

Loyola's Acts: The Rhetoric of the Self offers a nuanced exploration of Iñigo López de Loyola's pivotal spiritual transformation and its rhetorical framing within the Christian tradition. Far from being a straightforward autobiography, the text, titled Acta, is positioned as a work of epideictic rhetoric—a genre focused on praise and moral persuasion rather than strict factual recounting. Loyola's recounted experiences, from his formative wounding at Pamplona to his spiritual exercises and reflections, are interpreted not as direct self-narration but as filtered through the lens of his scribe, Gonçalves da Câmara. The book argues that Acta aligns more with Renaissance rhetorical traditions than modern autobiographical norms, emphasizing moral edification over empirical detail.

This study situates Loyola's Acts within the cultural and rhetorical milieu of the sixteenth century, drawing connections to classical and medieval traditions of memory, imitation, and spiritual meditation. It examines how Loyola's recitations, shaped by Gonçalves da Câmara's interpretive role, were less about chronicling personal events and more about exemplifying divine governance and moral lessons. By uncovering the layers of rhetorical strategy, intertextuality, and cultural context, the book reinterprets Acta as a profound moral and spiritual artifact, offering a fresh lens on Loyola's legacy and the broader tradition of Christian rhetorical literature.

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 1997.

Cover image for Loyola's Acts, isbn: 9780520320901

William Matthews

Canadian Diaries and Autobiographies

$23.95

Canadian Diaries and Autobiographies is a meticulously compiled bibliography of personal narratives that provide an intimate look into the fabric of Canadian life. Covering both British and French Canada, this collection includes diaries and autobiographies from a wide range of individuals, offering insights into the nation’s political, social, and cultural history. The entries span topics such as exploration, the fur trade, agriculture, industry, and social life, presenting a vivid panorama of Canadian experiences across all ranks and occupations. With annotations that detail the content and significance of each document, this book serves as a valuable resource for historians, sociologists, and literary scholars interested in uncovering the personal and often untold stories that have shaped Canada’s historical narrative.

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 1950.

Cover image for Canadian Diaries and Autobiographies, isbn: 9780520347984

Michael Nagler

Spontaneity and Tradition

$23.95

Spontaneity and Tradition: A Study in the Oral Art of Homer by Michael N. Nagler offers a groundbreaking reappraisal of the Iliad and the Odyssey through the lens of oral poetics. Building on the work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, Nagler demonstrates how Homer’s epics are best understood as oral-dictated performances that balance inherited formulas with the poet’s spontaneous artistry. Rather than viewing formulas and type-scenes as rigid conventions, Nagler argues that they function as dynamic resources for invention, enabling Homer to shape expansive, unified works in real time before a listening audience. Drawing on his own fieldwork with modern singers in Crete, Nagler provides a compelling analogy for how oral poets, far from being constrained, perform at their most creative when engaging an audience or even a recording device.

At once a contribution to Homeric studies and to broader debates in comparative literature, Spontaneity and Tradition reframes the “Homeric Question” by underscoring the coherence, flexibility, and depth of Homer’s art. Nagler situates the epics within a continuum of “spontaneous-traditional art,” emphasizing how oral composition-in-performance generates meaning at multiple levels—from formula and phrase to type-scene and narrative design. His analysis of textual transmission and his defense of a unitarian Homer highlight both the stability and the vitality of this tradition. Engaging with linguistics, anthropology, and literary theory, this book offers scholars a fresh perspective on Homer while modeling a method for approaching oral traditions worldwide.

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 1974.

Cover image for Spontaneity and Tradition, isbn: 9780520320758

Jing Wang

High Culture Fever

$29.95

High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China captures the vibrant and turbulent intellectual landscape of 1980s China, a decade where utopian visions and emergent crises coexisted in complex tension. This period witnessed the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitious pursuit of modernization through economic and political reform, creating a collaborative yet fraught relationship between the state and the cultural elite. Intellectuals, propelled by "methodology fever" and inspired by ideals of enlightenment, navigated the delicate balance of supporting and contesting the Party's modernization agenda. Key moments, such as the debates over "socialist alienation," the rise of "Culture Fever," and the controversies surrounding works like Heshang (Yellow River Elegy), reveal a landscape of ideological negotiation and cultural transformation. However, the euphoria of progress unraveled with the political and economic disillusionment of the late 1980s, culminating in the seismic events of the Tian’anmen Square crackdown, which shattered the utopian aspirations of the cultural elite.

This book examines the decade’s intricate interplay of modernity, cultural subjectivity, and intellectual ambition, as Chinese thinkers engaged in epoch-defining debates over Marxist humanism, modernism, and postmodernism. Through seven essays, it explores moments of ideological rupture, tracing how these disruptions reshaped cultural politics and the literary field in Deng's China. The author contextualizes these shifts within broader tensions between an elitist intellectual vision and the Party’s state-driven utopia, highlighting the inevitable collision of these projects in 1989. By juxtaposing the aspirations of the 1980s with the self-critical introspection of the 1990s, High Culture Fever provides a critical lens for understanding the enduring legacy of this transformative era in Chinese intellectual and cultural history.

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 1996.

Cover image for High Culture Fever, isbn: 9780520326019

R. A. Yoder

Emerson and the Orphic Poet in America

$23.95

In Emerson and the Orphic Poet in America, the author explores Ralph Waldo Emerson’s conception of poetry and the poet within the context of a larger Romantic tradition. Emerson’s work represents a critical shift in American thought, merging European Romantic ideals with an American voice. At the heart of his vision is the idea of the poet as both a visionary and a liberator of truth, a concept that Emerson inherited from a variety of traditions, including Blake’s notion of the “universal man” and the Logos of Platonism. Emerson’s invocation of the Orphic poet in his 1836 work Nature marks a departure from traditional American thought, positioning the poet as the one who speaks eternal truths, a voice that transcends the limitations of time and geography. His work incorporates a syncretic method, drawing from both European influences and American independence, while advocating for a return to the primal source of truth. This conception places the poet at the center of life’s order, a figure capable of transcending ordinary experience to reveal deeper, universal truths.

The study further delves into the development of Emerson’s own poetic practice, noting the evolution from the grand Orphic figure in Nature to a more modest poet in his later works. Emerson initially saw poetry as a prophetic and divine gift, but over time his work became more focused on the human and accessible aspects of poetry. His later writings reflect a poet who, though aware of the grandeur of Orphic ideals, recognizes the limitations of his own work, describing his voice as husky and imperfect. Despite this, Emerson still aligns himself with the greater tradition of poetic bards, finding satisfaction in their immortal melodies. The book concludes with an analysis of how Emerson’s modifications of the Orphic tradition have shaped American poetry, preserving its core inquiries while adapting it to a distinctly American context. Through his evolving poetic practice, Emerson’s work continues to resonate, influencing generations of American poets.

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 1978.

Cover image for Emerson and the Orphic Poet in America, isbn: 9780520338531

Janet Lembke

Bronze and Iron

$23.95

Bronze and Iron: Old Latin Poetry from Its Beginnings to 100 B.C. offers an in-depth exploration of the fragments and traditions of early Roman poetry, tracing its evolution from archaic ritual chants to more developed literary forms. This volume situates Old Latin poetry within its historical and cultural context, posing profound questions about the nature of art, the role of poetry in society, and the symbolic shifts it underwent during Rome’s formative years. Through engaging with the surviving fragments—ranging from the mystical Salian hymns to the sophisticated works of Naevius and Ennius—this study illuminates the poetic transition from collective survival and state celebration to the exploration of individual possibilities.

Divided into three sections—Historia, Mythos, and Plasmata—the book examines the factual preservation of Old Latin texts, proposes imaginative insights into their cultural and artistic significance, and offers a methodological approach to their translation. Through this framework, it investigates the maturation of poetic expression, the influence of early Roman deities like the Camenae, and the evolving purposes of poetry in the state and personal realms. Whether addressing questions about Ennius as a mathematical poet or the cinematic qualities of archaic epic, this work provides fresh perspectives on the foundations of Western poetic tradition, making it indispensable for classicists, literary historians, and anyone intrigued by the early origins of Roman art and thought.

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 1973.

Cover image for Bronze and Iron, isbn: 9780520333130

E. Valentine Daniel

Culture/Contexture

$29.95

The rapprochement of anthropology and literary studies, begun nearly fifteen years ago by such pioneering scholars as Clifford Geertz, Edward Said, and James Clifford, has led not only to the creation of the new scholarly domain of cultural studies but to the deepening and widening of both original fields. Literary critics have learned to "anthropologize" their studies—to ask questions about the construction of meanings under historical conditions and reflect on cultural "situatedness." Anthropologists have discovered narratives other than the master narratives of disciplinary social science that need to be drawn on to compose ethnographies.

Culture/Contexture brings together for the first time literature and anthropology scholars to reflect on the antidisciplinary urge that has made the creative borrowing between their two fields both possible and necessary. Critically expanding on such pathbreaking works as James Clifford and George Marcus's Writing Culture and Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer's Anthropology as Cultural Critique, contributors explore the fascination that draws the disciplines together and the fears that keep them apart. Their topics demonstrate the rich intersection of anthropology and literary studies, ranging from reading and race to writing and representation, incest and violence, and travel and time.

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 1996.

Cover image for Culture/Contexture, isbn: 9780520323698

Katherine Callen King

Achilles

$24.95

The powerful portrait of the glorious Greek warrior Achilles presented in Homer's Iliad imbued a particular soldier with transcendent value, linking "soldier" with "hero" in Western culture. Tracing Achilles' appearances in the works of poets, generals, philosophers, priests, and patriots, Katherine Callen King establishes the moral or political significance attached to the hero as a response to shifting mores and contemporary issues.

Cover image for Achilles, isbn: 9780520911178

Brents Stirling

The Shakespeare Sonnet Order

$29.95

The Shakespeare Sonnet Order, Poems and Groups, by Brents Stirling, confronts one of the most persistent puzzles in Shakespeare studies: the sequence of the 1609 Quarto. Published without Shakespeare’s sanction and likely pirated by Thomas Thorpe, the Quarto is the only surviving early text of the Sonnets, but its arrangement is riddled with incoherence, abrupt shifts, and broken continuities. Stirling contends that while the volume preserves genuine “runs” of closely interconnected poems—linked by theme, syntax, or recurring imagery—it also fragments larger, coherent groups into disordered miscellany. Against the skepticism of earlier critics who saw revision as futile, he argues that Shakespeare’s practice of “intensive linkage” sets a verifiable standard by which authentic sequences may be identified and disrupted ones restored. His principle is exacting: a sonnet can be relocated only when multiple forms of evidence—logical, thematic, and verbal—converge, and only when its movement yields coherence not otherwise present.

Rather than constructing a single grand narrative or treating the Sonnets as veiled autobiography, Stirling presents them as a series of discrete but intricately designed units. These poems, he maintains, demonstrate Shakespeare’s artistry in shaping small coherent groups rather than a continuous plot. By restoring such sequences, Stirling claims to reveal “new poems” obscured by Thorpe’s disorder, offering readers the experience of Shakespeare’s lyric craft in forms closer to the poet’s design. At stake is not only textual fidelity but interpretive clarity: where the Quarto encourages disjointed or speculative readings, Stirling’s reordered groups highlight Shakespeare’s deliberate strategies of repetition, variation, and development. His study, at once skeptical of past rearrangements and bold in its method, reopens the debate over sonnet order as central to appreciating Shakespeare’s most enigmatic lyric collection.

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 1968.

Cover image for The Shakespeare Sonnet Order, isbn: 9780520325319

Helen Caldwell

Machado De Assis

$23.95

Machado de Assis is among the most original creative minds in Brazil's rich, four-century-long literary tradition. Caldwell's critical and biographical study explores Machado's purpose, meaning, and artistic method in each of his nine novels, published between 1872 and 1908. She traces the ideas and recurrent themes, and identifies his affinities with other authors. In tracing Machado's experimentation with narrative techniques, Caldwell reveals the increasingly subtle use he made of point of view, sometimes indirect or reflected, sometimes multiple and "nested" like Chinese boxes. Caldwell shows the increasing sureness with which he individualized his characters, and how, in advance of his time, he developed action, not by realistic detail, but by the boldest use of allusion and symbol. Each novel is shown to be an artistic venture, and not in any sense a regurgitation from a sick soul as some critics have argued. IN searching out the unity of his novels, Caldwell explores the other aspects of Machado's intellectual life--as poet,journalist, playwright, conversationalist, and academician. Of particular interest is her attention to his shift away from the social criticism of his early novels into the labyrinth of individual psychology in the last five--all of which rank among the world literature. But this perceptive account never loses sight of the one element present in every piece of Machado's fiction, in eery one of his personages; that is, superlative comedy, in its whole range: wit, irony, satire, parody, burlesque, humor. Altogether, Caldwell reveals to us a writer, in essence a poet, who is still the altus prosator of Brazilian letters. 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 1970.

Cover image for Machado De Assis, isbn: 9780520311961

Frederic J. Grover

Drieu La Rochelle and the Fiction of Testimony

$23.95

This study aims to reassess the literary importance of Drieu La Rochelle, focusing on his fiction rather than political or moral judgments. Drieu's conception of literature makes it difficult to entirely separate the artist from the man, as his work often intertwines the personal and the political. In analyzing Drieu's fiction, the complexities and contradictions that emerge from his characters reflect the internal struggles he faced, especially in relation to his political stance. These nuances, often overlooked in traditional political critiques, lead to a portrayal of Drieu as a reluctant fascist, one who grappled with various human commitments—whether in his roles as husband, lover, soldier, or man of letters.

While critics may point to Drieu's actions as a collaborator during the occupation and his ambiguous stance on antisemitism as evidence of his political commitment, this study argues that Drieu's reluctance permeated all aspects of his life, including his fascism. Drieu's complex character does not easily fit into a simplistic political framework, and his ambivalence towards his political ideology speaks to broader contradictions within his personal and artistic identity. Coming from an opposing political perspective, the study strives to be as objective and understanding as possible, placing Drieu's literary works at the forefront of the analysis and offering a nuanced view of his complicated legacy.

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 1958.

Cover image for Drieu La Rochelle and the Fiction of Testimony, isbn: 9780520350496

Edward Duffy

Rousseau in England

$23.95

Rousseau in England: The Context for Shelley’s Critique of the Enlightenment by Edward Duffy examines how Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s reputation was forged, mythologized, and transformed in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, culminating in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s radical reinterpretation of Rousseau in *The Triumph of Life*. Whereas Napoleon dominated European political mythology for most of Shelley’s contemporaries, Duffy shows how Rousseau emerged in England as a cultural symbol—cast by Edmund Burke and others as the epitome of Enlightenment folly and blamed for the Revolution’s disasters. Against this background, Shelley recast Rousseau as a complex, ambivalent figure who embodied both the failures and the unrealized promise of Europe’s revolutionary upheavals.

The book’s first chapters reconstruct the English critical and political traditions that shaped Rousseau’s image, tracing the way reviewers, polemicists, and public intellectuals translated his works and life into a set of cultural givens. These representations provided the “grammar” within which Romantic poets engaged Rousseau. Duffy then turns to Coleridge, Hazlitt, and others before focusing on Shelley’s *The Triumph of Life* as a climactic act of myth-making that revises inherited assumptions. By situating Shelley’s poem within the dense ideological and historical discourse surrounding Rousseau, Duffy reveals how Shelley sought not simply to echo Romantic subjectivity but to rearticulate the meaning of revolution itself. Both a study of cultural reception and a close reading of Romantic poetics, Rousseau in England illuminates how myths of the Enlightenment were constructed, contested, and redeployed in the making of English Romanticism.

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 1979.

Cover image for Rousseau in England, isbn: 9780520338982

J. P. Sullivan

Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands

$38.95

Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands offers a comprehensive exploration of one of the most influential Roman poets, providing a selection of his sharp, satirical, and often provocative works. Martial, known for his witty and biting commentary on the social, political, and sexual norms of ancient Rome, is celebrated for his ability to encapsulate the essence of Roman life in short, concise epigrams. The book includes both original Latin texts and various English translations that showcase Martial's literary genius, offering readers a glimpse into the complexities of Roman society through humor, satire, and occasional obscenity. These epigrams reveal Martial's views on everything from the decadent lifestyles of the elite to the struggles of slaves, making his work a fascinating snapshot of the ancient world.

This edition of Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands also highlights the lasting influence of his work on English literature, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, when poets like Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick drew inspiration from his sharp wit and concise form. Featuring a rich collection of translations from various time periods, the book provides a unique insight into Martial's impact on poetic tradition, demonstrating how his themes of social criticism, flattery, and humor continue to resonate across generations. The thoughtful selection of epigrams and their accompanying translations offer both scholars and casual readers a deeper appreciation of Martial's wit and his significant place in the canon of classical literature.

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 1987.

Cover image for Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands, isbn: 9780520321113

Pauline Yu

Ways with Words

$19.95

Ways with Words presents interpretive essays by scholars from different disciplines on seven core, premodern classical Chinese texts. The remarkable diversity of these works--drawn from literature, philosophy, religion, and art history--challenges the presumption of a monolithic Chinese tradition that has been promoted by scholars and popular culture alike, both in China and the West.

The texts themselves include a poem from the Classic of Poetry compiled in the sixth century b.c.e.; passages from Mencius and Zhuangzi; the Heart Sutra; a poem by Du Fu and the Biography of Yingying by Yuan Zhen, both written during the Tang dynasty; and Notes on the Method for the Brush, a tenth-century text attributed to Jing Hao. Both the original Chinese versions and the translations are provided for each primary text. There are at least two essays--when possible from scholars in different fields--on each work. The volume as a whole demonstrates the various ways in which the modern Western reader can confront the impressive variety of texts from the classical Chinese tradition.

Cover image for Ways with Words, isbn: 9780520925359

Tomas Hägg

Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity

$40.95

The two centuries between a.d. 250 and a.d. 450 witnessed the creation of a distinctive Christian Greek culture in the eastern part of the Roman empire. This book focuses on the transition from ancient to Christian Hellenism as it was expressed in the biographical and panegyric literature of the period. The essays show how literary genres focusing on individual lives help to reveal this historical process. The contributors are leading scholars who bring several disciplines to bear on these texts: they are historians, theologians, classicists, and historians of religion. Together, the collection presents much new research and helps show Late Antiquity not only as an important transitional period but also as an era with an identity of its own.

Among the figures the biographical texts bring to life are Antony the Great, the charismatic desert father, and Basil of Caesarea, the influential church politician. Collectively the essays go beyond discussion of particular texts to consider such general topics as strategies of rhetoric and representation, the place of classical Greek culture in both pagan and Christian education, and what is meant by philosophy as a way of life.

Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity will send readers back to many Late Antique texts with an enhanced appreciation of how these highly idiosyncratic works exhibit in concentrated form some of the most characteristic and widespread values, tensions, and literary strategies of their age.

Cover image for Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, isbn: 9780520925052

Robert M. Durling

Time and the Crystal

$29.95

The Rime petrose, Dante's powerful lyrics about a woman as beautiful and as hard as a precious stone, are generally acknowledged to be an important moment in his stylistic development. In this full-length investigation of the poetics of the petrose and of their relation to TheDivine Comedy, Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez uncover new material, especially from medieval science (astrology and mineralogy), philosophy, and theology. The authors argue that the Rime petrose represent a major turning point in Dante's conception of a "microcosmic poetics" that became the fundamental mode of the Commedia. They demonstrate how Dante here attempts his first full account of his relation to the universe as a whole.

This work offers many insights into the intrinsic significance of these remarkable poems and their place in Dante's development. Especially far-reaching are the implications for the interpretation of TheDivine Comedy.Time and the Crystal will interest not only students of Dante but also intellectual historians, historians of science, students of poetics and poetic theory, and all those interested in medieval literature.

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

Cover image for Time and the Crystal, isbn: 9780520378728

Helmut Bonheim

Joyce's Benefictions

$23.95

Helmut Bonheim’s Joyce’s Benefictions offers a lucid, tightly argued tour of Joyce’s major works, reading rebellion and anti-authoritarian play as the motor of both style and theme. Moving from Dubliners and A Portrait to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, Bonheim shows how Joyce’s “outlaw” procedures—parody, portmanteau, montage—are inseparable from his persistent fascination with the very institutions he resists. Chapters on Leopold Bloom’s humane but compromised paternity, the alphabetic and musical “os” motif in Ulysses, and the serial role-reversals that unsettle any fixed hierarchy frame Joyce’s art as a long experiment in fusing technique with a heterodox ethics. Part of the influential Perspectives in Criticism series, the book situates Joyce’s innovations within broader debates about authority, language, and the cyclical logics of history.

Equally attentive to close reading and big claims, Bonheim reconceives Finnegans Wake as a theater of competing sovereignties—fathers, kings, priests—perpetually toppled and reinstalled, with Earwicker’s fall and return emblematic of the work’s comic-epic design. A culminating chapter casts Joyce’s art as an “epic of anarchy,” balancing formal audacity with a surprisingly stable prose lucidity that keeps even the Wake’s densest passages tethered to intelligible rhythms and social comedy. For scholars and advanced students of modernism, Joyce’s Benefictions remains a compelling synthesis: a study that models how to read across oeuvre, medium, and myth to disclose the ethical pressure under Joyce’s verbal pyrotechnics.

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 1964.

Cover image for Joyce's Benefictions, isbn: 9780520327542

Hans Meyerhoff

Time in Literature

$23.95

Time in Literature by Hans Meyerhoff explores how literature illuminates aspects of temporality that scientific analysis often excludes. Sparked by reflections during Hans Reichenbach’s seminars on the concept of time in physics and information theory, Meyerhoff recognized the distance between scientific constructions of time and the ways human beings actually experience it. Literature, he argues, has long been preoccupied with rendering the richness, ambiguity, and depth of lived temporality—qualities irrelevant to physics but central to selfhood, memory, and imagination. The study positions itself as a comparative inquiry: not a systematic treatise on physical time, nor an exercise in literary criticism, but rather a philosophical investigation of how time functions in literature, in human consciousness, and in relation to nature. Meyerhoff openly acknowledges the hybrid nature of his project, straddling science, literature, psychology, and philosophy, but insists such border-crossing is necessary to capture the full complexity of the problem.

Meyerhoff situates his work within a sparse field. While earlier studies, such as Jean Pouillon’s Temps et Roman and Georges Poulet’s Études sur le temps humain, examined literary or experiential time, they lacked the systematic philosophical scope he pursues. His book aims instead to develop a general interpretation of literature’s treatment of time as it intersects with the self and the natural world, drawing on examples from Proust, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, and Freud. Meyerhoff distinguishes his project from narrowly aesthetic analyses by emphasizing the broader philosophical implications of temporal representation: how narratives shape human consciousness, how myth and mysticism intersect with conceptions of time, and why modernity has foregrounded temporality as a central problem. He presents his study as exploratory and provisional, yet also as an original attempt to correlate the scientific, experiential, and literary dimensions of time in a unified framework, thereby expanding both philosophical discourse and literary understanding.

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 1955.

Cover image for Time in Literature, isbn: 9780520317918

Joshua Whatmough

Poetic, Scientific and Other Forms of Discourse

$23.95

Poetic, Scientific, and Other Forms of Discourse: A New Approach to Greek and Latin Literature is the twenty-ninth volume in the esteemed Sather Classical Lectures series. This work delves into the interplay of language, literary criticism, and the foundational texts of Greek and Latin literature. The author advocates for a dual focus: a deep understanding of classical texts through their original languages and the pure enjoyment of literature, free from overburdened textual criticism. With a critical lens on the methodologies of textual editors, the book argues that rigid adherence to analogy and rule—whether in grammar, meter, or textual annotation—often obscures the essence of these works rather than illuminating them.

This volume positions literature as a sophisticated form of communication, emphasizing its purpose-driven nature while integrating insights from modern linguistic theories. The lectures explore how principles from diverse fields, including mathematical linguistics and systems theory, can enhance our understanding of classical texts. By synthesizing evidence across disciplines, the book not only revisits traditional interpretations but also proposes innovative approaches to appreciating Greek and Latin literature. Engaging with the broader educational implications of this approach, it blends technical exploration with personal reflection, making a compelling case for a reinvigorated, language-centered engagement with the classics.

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 1956.

Cover image for Poetic, Scientific and Other Forms of Discourse, isbn: 9780520314566

Joaquim M. Machado de Assis

Helena

$23.95

This title was originally published in 1984.

This title was originally published in 1984.

Cover image for Helena, isbn: 9780520322509

Ian Watt

Conrad in the Nineteenth Century

$36.95

"Nothing short of a masterpiece. . . . One of the great critical works produced since the 1950s."—New York Times

"Nothing short of a masterpiece. . . . One of the great critical works produced since the 1950s."—New York Times

Cover image for Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, isbn: 9780520340893

Thomas C. Caramagno

The Flight of the Mind

$39.95

In this major new book on Virginia Woolf, Caramagno contends psychobiography has much to gain from a closer engagement with science. Literary studies of Woolf's life have been written almost exclusively from a psychoanalytic perspective. They portray Woolf as a victim of the Freudian "family romance," reducing her art to a neurotic evasion of a traumatic childhood.

But current knowledge about manic-depressive illness—its genetic transmission, its biochemistry, and its effect on brain function—reveals a new relationship between Woolf's art and her illness. Caramagno demonstrates how Woolf used her illness intelligently and creatively in her theories of fiction, of mental functioning, and of self structure. Her novels dramatize her struggle to imagine and master psychic fragmentation. They helped her restore form and value to her own sense of self and lead her readers to an enriched appreciation of the complexity of human consciousness.

In this major new book on Virginia Woolf, Caramagno contends psychobiography has much to gain from a closer engagement with science. Literary studies of Woolf's life have been written almost exclusively from a psychoanalytic perspective. They portray Wool

Cover image for The Flight of the Mind, isbn: 9780520935129

Antonio Machado

Juan de Mairena

$23.95

Antonio Machado’s Juan de Mairena is a singular work that bridges poetic and philosophical traditions, crafting an imaginative space where art, pedagogy, and metaphysics converge. As much an exploration of the Spanish soul as it is a reflection of the poet himself, this work reveals Machado's profound preoccupation with identity, otherness, and the essence of human experience. Through the voice of the fictional professor Juan de Mairena and his teacher Abel Martín, Machado delves into questions of being, time, and Spain’s cultural heritage, presenting a tapestry of aphorisms, dialogues, and musings that blend irony, introspection, and wit. This translation, including excerpts from The Apocryphal Songbooks, introduces English readers to the depth and complexity of Machado’s intellectual and artistic achievement.

The book offers more than a literary experience; it serves as an intimate dialogue with Machado's inner world, colored by the tragedies and reflections of his life. Mairena becomes not just a mouthpiece for the poet’s philosophical inclinations but a "complementary" self, allowing Machado to explore ideas he might not have expressed directly. This duality of creator and persona, coupled with Machado’s blend of existential musings and Spanish cultural critique, creates a work that is at once deeply personal and broadly resonant. As this translation demonstrates, Juan de Mairena is not merely a product of its time but a timeless inquiry into the nature of human thought, creativity, and the ineffable connections between them.

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 1963.

Cover image for Juan de Mairena, isbn: 9780520332744

Richard C. McCoy

The Rites of Knighthood

$23.95

The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry by Richard C. McCoy examines how the ceremonial culture of Elizabethan chivalry both mediated and exposed tensions at the heart of Tudor politics. Focusing on the careers of the Earl of Leicester, Sir Philip Sidney, and the Earl of Essex, McCoy shows how tournaments, tilts, and other courtly performances were more than rituals of devotion to the crown: they became arenas in which aristocratic ambition, militarism, and claims of “customary rights” were dramatized against royal authority. From Bullingbrook’s challenge in *Richard II* to Essex’s abortive rebellion, McCoy traces the ways in which chivalric “rites” embodied unresolved conflicts between honor and obedience, producing ceremonies that could temporarily balance crown and nobility but also threaten to destabilize the Elizabethan polity.

Alongside historical events, McCoy analyzes the literature of Elizabethan chivalry, from masques and tournament devices by George Gascoigne, Francis Bacon, and others to the grander poetic projects of Samuel Daniel, Edmund Spenser, and Shakespeare. Drawing on Kenneth Burke’s concept of symbolic action, he situates these texts as cultural strategies that attempted to reconcile political contradictions—even when they failed or were overwhelmed by the realities of faction and rebellion. Daniel’s *Civil Wars* falters under the weight of contemporary conflict, while Spenser’s *Faerie Queene* more successfully transforms ideological contradictions into symbolic syntheses. Shakespeare’s histories, too, dramatize chivalry’s ambivalence, at once affirming royal power and highlighting aristocratic resistance. By reading Elizabethan chivalry as both ideology and symbolic practice, McCoy reveals how its ceremonies and literature prepared the ground for later constitutional struggles, making this study essential for scholars of early modern literature, political culture, and the intersections of ritual, power, and representation.

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 1989.

Cover image for The Rites of Knighthood, isbn: 9780520331716

Michael Alexander

The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound

$23.95

An introduction to Ezra Pound's work. Alexander shows how he contributed to the modernist movement through his own writing as well as through his impact on Yeats, Eliot, Joyce and others.

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 1979.
An introduction to Ezra Pound's work. Alexander shows how he contributed to the modernist movement through his own writing as well as through his impact on Yeats, Eliot, Joyce and others.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program,

Cover image for The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound, isbn: 9780520315075

Eudo C. Mason

Goethe's Faust

$29.95

Goethe's Faust: Its Genesis and Purport offers an exploration of one of the most complex and multifaceted works in literary history. The author delves into Faust's intricate layers, examining its genesis, historical context, and Goethe's personal experiences that influenced the play. The work navigates the significant polarities that define Goethe's masterpiece—realism and idealism, the sensual and the spiritual, and the amoral versus ethical dimensions—highlighting the tensions and synthesis that give the drama its enduring power. The study acknowledges that Faust resists definitive interpretation, as each reader is drawn to different aspects of its dualities, and its richness lies in this very tension.

This comprehensive review not only addresses Goethe's artistic intentions and thematic depth but also critiques the complexities added by decades of academic analysis. The author challenges the "Higher Critics," suggesting that their overly intricate dissection often obscures the play's accessible elements, creating unnecessary barriers for readers. Instead, the book emphasizes the need to return to the text itself, Goethe's broader oeuvre, and his poetic vision to uncover the "inner fairy tale" that underpins Faust. Drawing inspiration from influential critics like Konrad Burdach and Emil Staiger, the study ultimately seeks to balance scholarly insight with a clear understanding of Goethe's intentions, offering a pathway to appreciating the universal and timeless nature of his work.

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 1967.

Cover image for Goethe's Faust, isbn: 9780520346123

Sabine MacCormack

The Shadows of Poetry

$63.00

Imperial ceremony was a vital form of self-expression for late antique society. Sabine MacCormack examines the ceremonies of imperial arrivals, funerals, and coronations from the late third to the late sixth centuries A.D., as manifest in the official literature and art of the time. Her study offers us new insights into the exercise of power and into the social, political, and cultural significance of religious change during the Christianization of the Roman world.

Imperial ceremony was a vital form of self-expression for late antique society. Sabine MacCormack examines the ceremonies of imperial arrivals, funerals, and coronations from the late third to the late sixth centuries A.D., as manifest in the official lit

Cover image for The Shadows of Poetry, isbn: 9780520920279

Wolfgang Lederer

The Kiss of the Snow Queen

$23.95

The Kiss of the Snow Queen: Hans Christian Andersen and Man’s Redemption by Woman explores the profound layers of meaning behind Andersen’s beloved tale, The Snow Queen. Framed as a children’s story, the narrative is revealed to be rich in allegory and adult themes, crafted with dual audiences in mind. Andersen himself hinted that his tales, while seemingly for children, carried deeper lessons intended for adults—truths that often transcended the author’s conscious understanding. This study unpacks the autobiographical elements woven into the story and the broader poetic truths Andersen sought to convey about love, redemption, and human relationships.

The book dives into the duality of Andersen’s storytelling, juxtaposing the magical elements that enchant children with the philosophical and spiritual insights aimed at engaging adult readers. It examines Andersen’s claim that every character and scenario reflects his own life, inviting readers to uncover how the tale mirrors universal struggles and aspirations. With its exploration of The Snow Queen as both a personal and archetypal narrative, this work positions Andersen as a master poet whose fairy tales bridge the gap between childlike wonder and profound wisdom, offering truths that resonate across generations.

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 1986.

Cover image for The Kiss of the Snow Queen, isbn: 9780520327597

William R Siebenschuh

Form and Purpose in Boswell's Biographical Works

$23.95

Form and Purpose in Boswell's Biographical Works provides a detailed comparative analysis of James Boswell’s three major biographical works: The Life of Johnson, The Tour to the Hebrides, and the Account of Corsica. Through this examination, the book challenges the traditional view that Boswell’s biographical method developed in a simple, linear progression from one work to the next. It argues that each of these works represents a distinct artistic achievement, with Boswell consciously shaping and organizing his factual materials in ways that go beyond mere documentation. The book demonstrates that Boswell’s talent as a biographer was not limited to presenting facts, but involved a sophisticated process of interpretation and organization, especially evident in The Life of Johnson, where his portrayal of Johnson’s character is built around a cohesive narrative structure.

The study also highlights how Boswell’s approach to biography evolved depending on the subject and context of each work. In The Account of Corsica, Boswell uses a propagandistic approach to portray Paoli, employing different dramatic techniques than those he used in later works. In contrast, The Tour to the Hebrides presents a more static image of Johnson, focusing on his public persona in unusual and often humorous contexts, but without delving into his complex character as Boswell did in The Life of Johnson. By comparing these works, the book offers a fresh perspective on Boswell’s artistic abilities, demonstrating that he was a far more deliberate and interpretive biographer than previously acknowledged, capable of creating unified and compelling portraits of his subjects.

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 1972.

Cover image for Form and Purpose in Boswell's Biographical Works, isbn: 9780520316324

Sheila Delany

The Naked Text

$23.95

A sequel to her seminal book on Chaucer’s House of Fame, Sheila Delany’s elegant and innovative study of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women explores what it meant to be a reader and a writer, and to be English and a courtier, in the late fourteenth century. The richness of late medieval art, philosophy, and history are powerfully brought to bear on one of Chaucer’s most controversial works. So too are the insights of modern critical theory—semiotics, historicism, and gender studies especially—making this a unique achievement in medieval and Chaucerian studies. Delany’s strikingly original readings of Chaucer’s Orientalism, his sexual wordplay, his theological attitudes, and his treatment of sex and gender have given us a Chaucer for our time.
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 1994.

Cover image for The Naked Text, isbn: 9780520309791

Joel Fineman

Shakespeare's Perjured Eye

$29.95

Fineman argues that in the sonnets Shakespeare developed an unprecedented poetic persona, one that subsequently became the governing model of all literary subjectivity.
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 1986.

Cover image for Shakespeare's Perjured Eye, isbn: 9780520313842

G. W. Bowersock

Fiction as History

$95.00

Using pagan fiction produced in Greek and Latin during the early Christian era, G. W. Bowersock investigates the complex relationship between "historical" and "fictional" truths. This relationship preoccupied writers of the second century, a time when apparent fictions about both past and present were proliferating at an astonishing rate and history was being invented all over again. With force and eloquence, Bowersock illuminates social attitudes of this period and persuasively argues that its fiction was influenced by the emerging Christian Gospel narratives.

Enthralling in its breadth and enhanced by two erudite appendices, this is a book that will be warmly welcomed by historians and interpreters of literature.

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 1994.

Karen Sánchez-Eppler

Touching Liberty

$95.00

In this striking study of the pre–Civil War literary imagination, Karen Sánchez-Eppler charts how bodily difference came to be recognized as a central problem for both political and literary expression. Her readings of sentimental anti-slavery fiction, slave narratives, and the lyric poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson demonstrate how these texts participated in producing a new model of personhood—one in which the racially distinct and physically constrained slave body converged alongside the sexually distinct and domestically circumscribed female body.

Moving from the public domain of abolitionist politics to the privacy of lyric poetry, Sánchez-Eppler argues that attention to the physical body blurs the boundaries between public and private. Drawing analogies between black and female bodies, feminist-abolitionists use the public sphere of anti-slavery politics to write about sexual desires and anxieties they cannot voice directly. However, Sánchez-Eppler warns against exaggerating the positive links between literature and politics. She finds that the relationships between feminism and abolitionism reveal patterns of exploitation, appropriation, and displacement of the black body that acknowledge the difficulties in embracing “difference” in the nineteenth century as in the twentieth. Her insightful examination of these issues makes a distinctive mark within American literary and cultural studies.

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 1993.

Edited by George Winchester Stone, Jr.

The Stage and the Page

$95.00

The Stage and the Page: London’s “Whole Show” in the Eighteenth-Century Theatre edited by Geo. Winchester Stone, Jr. reconceives eighteenth-century drama as a seamless interplay of script and spectacle. Refusing the false choice between literary text and stage event, this collection shows how London audiences experienced an evening as an integrated sequence—overture, prologue, mainpiece, entr’acte song and dance, epilogue, afterpiece, and final music. Essays by leading scholars map the century’s tastes and institutions: Robert D. Hume reclassifies comedy into five performative modes and periodizes shifting fashions; John Loftis reads *Tancred and Sigismunda* against the waning drama of political opposition; Leo Hughes restores the centrality of afterpieces to audience pleasure. Together they model a criticism calibrated to box-office realities, actor personalities, and the rhythms of the patent theatres.

Infrastructure and embodiment receive equal weight. Donald C. Mullin links playhouse architecture to production choices, while Ralph G. Allen’s account of “irrational entertainment” uncovers the sensorium of scenic effects. Four music-centered chapters (Stone, Knapp, Dircks, Lincoln) demonstrate how songs, burlettas, and mythic settings—from The Enchanter to Orpheus—suffused Garrick’s stage with sound, with companion audio illustrations that animate their arguments. Practice-based studies by Charles H. Shattuck (promptbooks), Shirley Wynne (gesture and dance), and Bernard Beckerman (norms for performance-aware criticism) translate ephemeral staging back onto the page. Richly interdisciplinary and methodologically eclectic, The Stage and the Page equips scholars, directors, dramaturgs, and music historians to reconstruct London’s “whole show,” restoring the eighteenth century’s theater as a living art where reading and performance illuminate each other.

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 1981.

Edited by George Winchester Stone, Jr.

The Stage and the Page

$39.95

The Stage and the Page: London’s “Whole Show” in the Eighteenth-Century Theatre edited by Geo. Winchester Stone, Jr. reconceives eighteenth-century drama as a seamless interplay of script and spectacle. Refusing the false choice between literary text and stage event, this collection shows how London audiences experienced an evening as an integrated sequence—overture, prologue, mainpiece, entr’acte song and dance, epilogue, afterpiece, and final music. Essays by leading scholars map the century’s tastes and institutions: Robert D. Hume reclassifies comedy into five performative modes and periodizes shifting fashions; John Loftis reads *Tancred and Sigismunda* against the waning drama of political opposition; Leo Hughes restores the centrality of afterpieces to audience pleasure. Together they model a criticism calibrated to box-office realities, actor personalities, and the rhythms of the patent theatres.

Infrastructure and embodiment receive equal weight. Donald C. Mullin links playhouse architecture to production choices, while Ralph G. Allen’s account of “irrational entertainment” uncovers the sensorium of scenic effects. Four music-centered chapters (Stone, Knapp, Dircks, Lincoln) demonstrate how songs, burlettas, and mythic settings—from The Enchanter to Orpheus—suffused Garrick’s stage with sound, with companion audio illustrations that animate their arguments. Practice-based studies by Charles H. Shattuck (promptbooks), Shirley Wynne (gesture and dance), and Bernard Beckerman (norms for performance-aware criticism) translate ephemeral staging back onto the page. Richly interdisciplinary and methodologically eclectic, The Stage and the Page equips scholars, directors, dramaturgs, and music historians to reconstruct London’s “whole show,” restoring the eighteenth century’s theater as a living art where reading and performance illuminate each other.

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 1981.

Simon Karlinsky

The Bitter Air of Exile

$95.00

This compelling volume explores the complex lives and creative achievements of Russian writers exiled during a turbulent half-century following the Bolshevik Revolution. From renowned figures like Ivan Bunin and Dmitry Merezhkovsky to emerging voices such as Nina Berberova and Boris Poplavsky, the book illuminates the struggles and triumphs of literary figures forced to navigate their craft far from home. Set against the backdrop of stringent Soviet censorship and Western indifference, The Bitter Air of Exile details how these authors sustained a flourishing émigré literary culture—complete with journals, publishing houses, and intellectual discourse—despite limited readership and pervasive hostility. Through anecdotes of writers like Vladimir Nabokov and their tenuous reception in Western literary circles, the work vividly portrays the isolation and resilience that defined émigré creativity.

The collection further examines how émigré literature, often censored or dismissed in both Soviet and Western spheres, remains a vital but underappreciated component of 20th-century Russian literary heritage. It highlights how themes of individuality, mysticism, and surrealism found expression in exile, challenging the orthodoxies of Soviet culture. By featuring both celebrated and obscure writers, and spanning early émigré efforts through mid-century Cold War realities, the book makes a compelling case for reevaluating the global importance of Russian literature in exile. With its incisive critique of cultural prejudice and call to broaden the literary canon, The Bitter Air of Exile is an essential resource for understanding the richness and complexity of Russian literary traditions outside the U.S.S.R.

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 1977.

Simon Karlinsky

The Bitter Air of Exile

$49.95

This compelling volume explores the complex lives and creative achievements of Russian writers exiled during a turbulent half-century following the Bolshevik Revolution. From renowned figures like Ivan Bunin and Dmitry Merezhkovsky to emerging voices such as Nina Berberova and Boris Poplavsky, the book illuminates the struggles and triumphs of literary figures forced to navigate their craft far from home. Set against the backdrop of stringent Soviet censorship and Western indifference, The Bitter Air of Exile details how these authors sustained a flourishing émigré literary culture—complete with journals, publishing houses, and intellectual discourse—despite limited readership and pervasive hostility. Through anecdotes of writers like Vladimir Nabokov and their tenuous reception in Western literary circles, the work vividly portrays the isolation and resilience that defined émigré creativity.

The collection further examines how émigré literature, often censored or dismissed in both Soviet and Western spheres, remains a vital but underappreciated component of 20th-century Russian literary heritage. It highlights how themes of individuality, mysticism, and surrealism found expression in exile, challenging the orthodoxies of Soviet culture. By featuring both celebrated and obscure writers, and spanning early émigré efforts through mid-century Cold War realities, the book makes a compelling case for reevaluating the global importance of Russian literature in exile. With its incisive critique of cultural prejudice and call to broaden the literary canon, The Bitter Air of Exile is an essential resource for understanding the richness and complexity of Russian literary traditions outside the U.S.S.R.

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 1977.

Mark Shechner

Joyce in Nighttown

$39.95

Joyce in Nighttown offers a compelling psychoanalytic examination of James Joyce's Ulysses, positioning the novel as a complex psychological gesture both deeply personal and universally resonant. This book capitalizes on the maturity of psychoanalytic literary criticism, foregoing justifications for its method to focus on elucidating the intricate interplay between Joyce’s life, his creative process, and his magnum opus. By analyzing the recurring motifs of familial relationships, identity, and symbolic action, the text uncovers the latent conflicts underpinning Joyce's narrative innovations. It highlights how Ulysses serves as a stage for Joyce's internal struggles, particularly through its protean protagonist, Leopold Bloom, and his interwoven dynamics with Stephen Dedalus, the author’s literary alter ego.

Drawing on Freud's theories of artistic creation as sublimated personal conflicts, Joyce in Nighttown frames Ulysses as an intricate "family romance," reflecting unresolved tensions and repressed desires. The author explores Joyce's portrayal of Shakespeare through Stephen’s monologue in "Scylla and Charybdis" as a mirror of Joyce’s own creative dilemmas: art as both revelation and concealment. This psychoanalytic inquiry not only interprets Joyce’s gestures toward his Irish identity and familial legacy but also situates Ulysses as a text that engages in self-reflective dialogue. Bridging the gap between personal neuroses and public artistry, this book offers scholars an innovative lens to explore how Joyce’s life and art are inextricably bound, providing fresh insights into the emotional and intellectual architecture of one of the 20th century’s greatest literary achievements.

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 1974.

Coppélia Kahn

Man's Estate

$95.00

In Man's Estate, the exploration of masculine identity takes center stage as Shakespeare’s works are examined through the lens of psychoanalytic theory and historical context. Shakespeare's male characters grapple with the challenges of defining and sustaining their manhood within the constraints of the patriarchal Elizabethan society. Themes of gender roles, familial relationships, and sexual identity are deeply embedded in the narratives, reflecting both universal human experiences and the specific anxieties of his era. This study delves into the subconscious fears, desires, and cultural expectations that inform Shakespeare's portrayals of men and their relationships with women, fathers, sons, and society at large.

The book bridges Freudian psychoanalysis and Shakespearean criticism, offering a fresh perspective on how early life experiences shape the conflicts and identities of male protagonists. By examining characters like Coriolanus, Macbeth, and Hamlet, the author reveals how unresolved tensions from childhood resurface in adulthood, influencing their actions and self-perceptions. The analysis extends beyond individual characters to explore broader societal constructs, such as the oppressive dynamics of patriarchal power and the ambivalence it fosters in men. Shakespeare’s works are presented not only as timeless explorations of human nature but also as incisive commentaries on the cultural definitions of masculinity that continue to resonate in contemporary discourse.

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 1981.

Ronald G. Walker

Infernal Paradise

$49.95

The allure of Mexico in modern English fiction is a compelling and underexplored subject, particularly in the works of D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Malcolm Lowry. These authors, drawn to Mexico's mystique, crafted major novels that explore the country’s unique cultural, social, and political landscape. Infernal Paradise examines how Mexico influenced their artistic visions and how their experiences in the country shaped significant literary works, such as The Plumed Serpent, Eyeless in Gaza, The Power and the Glory, and Under the Volcano. By delving into both the travel writings and novels of these authors, the analysis seeks to understand the dual processes of encountering Mexico firsthand and transforming those encounters into fiction.

The book is structured to first contextualize the writers’ fascination with Mexico, focusing on the country’s dramatic landscapes, revolutionary ideals, and the enigmatic presence of its indigenous culture. The travel writings of Lawrence, Huxley, Greene, Waugh, and Lowry offer a bridge between their immediate experiences and the novels that followed, reflecting the initial reactions that evolved into deeper insights. The writers' personal motives for visiting Mexico—ranging from Lawrence's utopian dreams to Greene and Waugh's concern for the Catholic Church's plight under socialist policies—shaped their perceptions and creative responses. Through a detailed exploration of these travel accounts and the major novels, this book illuminates how Mexico became both an infernal and paradisiacal setting in the English literary imagination, a paradox that continues to resonate in these works. An appendix further enriches the discussion by examining Ralph Bates's The Fields of Paradise, adding another dimension to the "infernal paradise" theme in English fiction about Mexico.

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 1978.

Lona Mosk Packer

Christina Rossetti

$49.95

Christina Rossetti, one of the most remarkable poets of the 19th century, remains an enigmatic figure whose life and work continue to captivate readers. While her brother William Michael Rossetti's interpretations have dominated biographies to date, recent studies aim to uncover a deeper and more nuanced understanding of her inner world. Rossetti's poetry, rich with emotional and spiritual intensity, often reveals glimpses of a life shaped by unspoken struggles and profound passions. By examining her work and her connections, including her relationships with figures like William Bell Scott, a fresh perspective emerges, suggesting that her experiences of love and conflict deeply influenced her creative energy and personal growth.

This exploration seeks to go beyond the surface of daily events to delve into the "deeper internal currents" of Christina’s life. Her poetry serves as a map to the intricate interplay of emotions and convictions that defined her as an artist and individual. Through meticulous research and a sensitive approach, this narrative reconstructs a portrait of a woman whose life was as richly textured and multifaceted as her verse. In doing so, it not only illuminates Christina Rossetti's enduring legacy but also honors her belief that truth, tempered with tenderness, is the ultimate tribute to a life fully lived.

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 1963.

John Henry Raleigh

Matthew Arnold and American Culture

$49.95

Matthew Arnold and American Culture examines the profound impact of Arnold's writings—spanning literary, social, religious, and cultural topics—on American intellectual life from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Arnold's influence is unmatched among foreign critics in the United States, shaping discourse in a way few domestic figures have. His critique of English culture, his promotion of culture as an antidote to social unrest, and his insistence on the value of morality and intellectual rigor found eager audiences, especially in a post-Civil War America seeking cultural maturity and intellectual direction. His ideas resonated with a nation grappling with its identity amidst rapid industrialization, westward expansion, and a growing literary consciousness.

Despite initial resistance to English intellectualism in the wake of the Civil War and a strong sense of American self-sufficiency in the arts, Arnold's ideas found fertile ground, particularly among New England literati, cultural reformers, and critics like Henry James and Lionel Trilling. Arnold's emphasis on "sweetness and light," his call for critical detachment, and his vision of culture as a vehicle for moral and societal improvement complemented and challenged the intellectual frameworks of American figures like Emerson and Lowell. While Emerson espoused self-reliance and transcendental ideals, Arnold offered a tempered, cosmopolitan perspective that advocated for measured engagement with European traditions and the cultivation of a cultural "center." This interplay of ideas highlights the enduring relevance of Arnold’s critique in shaping American cultural and critical thought during a transformative era.

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 1957.

Coppélia Kahn

Man's Estate

$39.95

In Man's Estate, the exploration of masculine identity takes center stage as Shakespeare’s works are examined through the lens of psychoanalytic theory and historical context. Shakespeare's male characters grapple with the challenges of defining and sustaining their manhood within the constraints of the patriarchal Elizabethan society. Themes of gender roles, familial relationships, and sexual identity are deeply embedded in the narratives, reflecting both universal human experiences and the specific anxieties of his era. This study delves into the subconscious fears, desires, and cultural expectations that inform Shakespeare's portrayals of men and their relationships with women, fathers, sons, and society at large.

The book bridges Freudian psychoanalysis and Shakespearean criticism, offering a fresh perspective on how early life experiences shape the conflicts and identities of male protagonists. By examining characters like Coriolanus, Macbeth, and Hamlet, the author reveals how unresolved tensions from childhood resurface in adulthood, influencing their actions and self-perceptions. The analysis extends beyond individual characters to explore broader societal constructs, such as the oppressive dynamics of patriarchal power and the ambivalence it fosters in men. Shakespeare’s works are presented not only as timeless explorations of human nature but also as incisive commentaries on the cultural definitions of masculinity that continue to resonate in contemporary discourse.

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 1981.

Lona Mosk Packer

Christina Rossetti

$95.00

Christina Rossetti, one of the most remarkable poets of the 19th century, remains an enigmatic figure whose life and work continue to captivate readers. While her brother William Michael Rossetti's interpretations have dominated biographies to date, recent studies aim to uncover a deeper and more nuanced understanding of her inner world. Rossetti's poetry, rich with emotional and spiritual intensity, often reveals glimpses of a life shaped by unspoken struggles and profound passions. By examining her work and her connections, including her relationships with figures like William Bell Scott, a fresh perspective emerges, suggesting that her experiences of love and conflict deeply influenced her creative energy and personal growth.

This exploration seeks to go beyond the surface of daily events to delve into the "deeper internal currents" of Christina’s life. Her poetry serves as a map to the intricate interplay of emotions and convictions that defined her as an artist and individual. Through meticulous research and a sensitive approach, this narrative reconstructs a portrait of a woman whose life was as richly textured and multifaceted as her verse. In doing so, it not only illuminates Christina Rossetti's enduring legacy but also honors her belief that truth, tempered with tenderness, is the ultimate tribute to a life fully lived.

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 1963.

Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse

The Imaginary Puritan

$39.95

Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse challenge traditional accounts of the origins of modern Anglo-American culture by focusing on the emergence of print culture in England and the North American colonies. They postulate a modern middle class that consisted of authors and intellectuals who literally wrote a new culture into being.

Milton's Paradise Lost marks the emergence of this new literacy. The authors show how Milton helped transform English culture into one of self-enclosed families made up of self-enclosed individuals. However, the authors point out that the popularity of Paradise Lost was matched by that of the Indian captivity narratives that flowed into England from the American colonies. Mary Rowlandson's account of her forcible separation from the culture of her origins stresses the ordinary person's ability to regain those lost origins, provided she remains truly English. In a colonial version of the Miltonic paradigm, Rowlandson sought to return to a family of individuals much like the one in Milton's depiction of the fallen world.

Thus the origin both of modern English culture and of the English novel are located in North America. American captivity narratives formulated the ideal of personal life that would be reproduced in the communities depicted by Defoe, Richardson, and later domestic fiction.

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 1992.

John M. Wallace

The Golden and the Brazen World

$95.00

The Golden and the Brazen World: Papers in Literature and History, 1650–1800 examines the evolving relationship between literature and history, inspired by Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry. Sidney's distinction between poetry's "golden world," which idealizes and conveys moral truths, and history's "brazen world," focused on detailed but often confusing facts, frames the central theme. By the 18th century, this rivalry had softened into a collaborative exchange, with poets drawing on historical subjects for inspiration and historians using narrative techniques to enhance their work. This interdisciplinary dialogue reflects their shared roots in moral philosophy and their complementary efforts to illuminate human experience.

The essays in this collection, based on lectures from the Clark Library, showcase this intersection through specific case studies. Topics range from Andrew Marvell’s The First Anniversary and its political-poetic implications to re-evaluations of John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel. Contributions also include Susan Staves' exploration of legal history in 18th-century marriage and James Chandler's analysis of Edmund Burke’s influence on Wordsworth. Together, these essays reveal how literature and history shape and inform each other, highlighting their combined potential to enrich intellectual and cultural understanding.

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 1985.

John M. Wallace

The Golden and the Brazen World

$39.95

The Golden and the Brazen World: Papers in Literature and History, 1650–1800 examines the evolving relationship between literature and history, inspired by Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry. Sidney's distinction between poetry's "golden world," which idealizes and conveys moral truths, and history's "brazen world," focused on detailed but often confusing facts, frames the central theme. By the 18th century, this rivalry had softened into a collaborative exchange, with poets drawing on historical subjects for inspiration and historians using narrative techniques to enhance their work. This interdisciplinary dialogue reflects their shared roots in moral philosophy and their complementary efforts to illuminate human experience.

The essays in this collection, based on lectures from the Clark Library, showcase this intersection through specific case studies. Topics range from Andrew Marvell’s The First Anniversary and its political-poetic implications to re-evaluations of John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel. Contributions also include Susan Staves' exploration of legal history in 18th-century marriage and James Chandler's analysis of Edmund Burke’s influence on Wordsworth. Together, these essays reveal how literature and history shape and inform each other, highlighting their combined potential to enrich intellectual and cultural understanding.

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 1985.

Robert Humphrey

Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel

$39.95

Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel by Robert Humphrey is a foundational study that clarifies one of the most elusive terms in modern literary criticism. While “stream of consciousness” has often been applied loosely to a wide range of works, Humphrey offers a precise definition: fiction that emphasizes the prespeech levels of consciousness in order to reveal the psychic being of characters. Focusing on the major practitioners—Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner—he identifies the varied purposes behind their use of inner awareness: from Woolf’s search for mystical vision, to Joyce’s comic objectivity, to Faulkner’s tragic exploration of psychic conflict. In doing so, he situates these writers within broader philosophical and psychological currents while distinguishing their methods from earlier naturalism and experimental realism.

The book is not merely theoretical but also practical, serving as an inductive manual of how stream-of-consciousness fiction is constructed. Humphrey systematically analyzes the functions, techniques, devices, and forms that shape this mode of narrative, including interior monologue, time- and space-montage, suspended coherence, and metaphorical transformation. By concentrating on technique, he demonstrates how these authors expanded the possibilities of fiction, moving beyond external action to depict the inner drama of thought, memory, and vision. First published in 1954, Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel remains an indispensable resource for students and scholars of modernism, offering both a framework for understanding a pivotal literary form and an evaluation of its artistic achievements.

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 1954.

R. W. Dent

Proverbial Language in English Drama Exclusive of Shakespeare, 1495-1616

$125.00

Proverbial Language in English Drama, Exclusive of Shakespeare (1495-1616): An Index serves as a comprehensive reference for scholars of Renaissance drama and the use of proverbial expressions in early modern English theater. Designed as a companion to the author's earlier Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language: An Index, this volume systematically catalogs and analyzes proverbial phrases found in extant English drama from the late 15th century through the early 17th century, excluding Shakespeare’s works. The index provides a meticulous breakdown of how proverbs were employed by dramatists across this period, offering insights into language, culture, and thematic structures in the plays.

Drawing from sources such as M. P. Tilley’s Dictionary of Proverbs, B. J. Whiting’s Modern Proverbial Sayings, and E. P. Wilson’s compilations, this volume refines and supplements existing proverb collections with a rigorous method of inclusion and exclusion. It identifies proverbs that were widely recognized in early modern England and distinguishes them from idiomatic expressions, topoi, or literal references that lack proverbial status. The author also critically assesses inconsistencies in previous scholarship, offering corrections and clarifications where necessary. This invaluable resource sheds light on the ways in which proverbial wisdom shaped Renaissance drama outside of Shakespeare, providing scholars with a deeper understanding of the linguistic and rhetorical traditions that influenced early modern English theater.

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 1984.

Gilbert Norwood

Essays on Euripidean Drama

$95.00

Essays on Euripidean Drama by Gilbert Norwood is a landmark collection that reconsiders Euripides’ art through close analysis of four central plays. Written by a leading classicist of his generation, these essays take up long-standing puzzles in Euripidean criticism—from the divine epiphanies of The Bacchae, to the interplay of human and divine agency in Hippolytus, to the structural oddities of the Supplices. Norwood combines philological rigor with literary sensitivity, showing how Euripides’ dramaturgy—so often derided by ancient rivals and modern critics alike—reflects both deliberate experiment and a willingness to unsettle audience expectations.

Rather than treating Euripides as a flawed imitator of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Norwood situates him as a dramatist of restless imagination, whose sudden tonal shifts, sardonic wit, and “rescue-drama” tendencies anticipate later developments in European theater. By tracing both inconsistencies and triumphs across these plays, Essays on Euripidean Drama argues that Euripides was less a classical “lawgiver of tragedy” than a romantic innovator, inviting audiences into an art of doubt, surprise, and irony. The volume remains a touchstone for scholars and students interested in understanding why Euripides continues to divide opinion and yet exert profound influence across the centuries.

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 1954.

Kathleen Williams

Spenser's World of Glass

$95.00

Spencer's World of Glass: A Reading of *The Faerie Queene presents Kathleen Williams’s luminous reappraisal of Spenser as not merely a painter of sumptuous scenes but a rigorous maker of worlds. Refusing the tired cliché that Spenser’s epic is “a poem that nobody reads,” Williams shows how its apparent luxuriance serves a profoundly architectonic purpose: the poem generates its own coherent universe, where romance wandering and moral design interlock. Knights such as Red Crosse, Guyon, and Britomart are not walking abstractions but experiential agents whose quests model the mind’s labor to wrest meaning from a resistant world.

At the center of Williams’s argument is Spenser’s fusion of romance narrative with an allegorical method that orders rather than flattens lived experience. Allegory here is no pageant of personifications; it is a structural principle that binds episodes, images, and “virtues” into an intelligible cosmos—what Williams, following Spenser, evokes as a “world of glass,” round, reflective, and exacting. The poem’s “mighty maze” is “not without a plan”: its digressions are dramatizations of human perplexity; its resolutions disclose a lawfulness felt before it is understood.

Williams traces how Spenser’s epic “makes” nature by compressing and clarifying significances across psychological, ethical, political, and cosmic registers. The virtues organize books as points of view rather than labels, converging toward magnificence, Gloriana’s court, and Nature’s ordinance. Throughout, Williams’s readings are alert to texture and structure alike, revealing how Spenser’s ease is the mark of controlled power and how the poem’s generosity of detail is the condition of its truth.

A model of analytic poise and critical tact, this study restores The Faerie Queene as a living, intelligible whole—an artful imitation of life in which order emerges from bewilderment and the glassy world clarifies the one we inhabit.

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 1966.

John M. Ellis

The Theory of Literary Criticism

$95.00

The Theory of Literary Criticism: A Logical Analysis by John M. Ellis argues that modern debates about “what criticism should do” have stagnated since the mid-century syntheses, breeding a climate of “wise eclecticism” that shrinks theory’s scope to ad-hoc judgment. Ellis contends this posture is a practical stopgap, not a theory: if critics switch methods “case by case,” theory must still explain which distinctions justify those switches. He traces the impasse to two habits: (1) reform-driven polemics that keep questions at slogan level (“study the text itself” vs. “study its context”) and (2) an unexamined **reference theory of meaning** (language = names for things), which either declares non-referential critical claims meaningless (à la logical positivism) or mystifies them as beyond analysis. Both routes, he argues, block principled criteria for interpretation and evaluation.

Ellis proposes recentering literary theory on logical and conceptual analysis, drawing on Wittgenstein rather than importing ready-made dogma. The practical method: begin with What distinction is this claim trying to make?”; surface the implied contrasts and purposes; then test whether the opposed positions genuinely conflict (often they don’t). Examples—“read literature as literature,” “a text is a social document”—only become meaningful once their operative contrasts (e.g., which contextual uses, which exclusions) are specified. The payoff is a theory that (a) analyzes kinds of critical statements without reducing them to reference, (b) provides rules of use rather than rigid verifications, and (c) rebuilds shared criteria where current eclecticism offers only “sound judgment.”

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 1974.

Rhys Carpenter

Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics

$39.95

Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics is Rhys Carpenter’s classic exploration of the oral traditions behind the Iliad and the Odyssey. Delivered as part of the Sather Classical Lectures, this work interrogates the relationship between saga, folklore, and literary invention in Homeric poetry. Carpenter argues that the epics are not merely records of historical events, nor pure fabrications, but rather complex compositions where oral traditions—heroic saga, folk tales, fairy motifs, and narrative fiction—interweave to form the glittering fabric of Homer’s verse. By placing Homer alongside other oral traditions such as Norse sagas, the Song of Roland, and Beowulf, Carpenter demonstrates the shared mechanisms by which oral poets transformed inherited stories into powerful cultural myths.

Balancing archaeology, philology, and comparative folklore, Carpenter revisits perennial debates about the historicity of Troy, the oral transmission of heroic poetry, and the folkloric elements embedded in Homeric narrative. Chapters move from foundational questions of “literature without letters” to focused case studies, including the saga of Troy, the role of folktale motifs in the Iliad and Odyssey, and the enduring Bear’s Son myth. With wit and clarity, Carpenter shows how the seeming contradictions of Homeric epic dissolve when read as the creative fusion of oral genres, shaped both by memory and invention. This book remains a touchstone for students of classics, comparative literature, and mythology, illuminating the artistry and cultural power of one of the world’s foundational literary traditions.

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 1946.

Edited by Cyril Birch

Studies in Chinese Literary Genres

$95.00

Edited by Cyril Birch, Studies in Chinese Literary Genres is a landmark collection that foregrounds genre as the key to understanding the evolution of China’s literary tradition. Eleven leading scholars trace the histories, functions, and transformations of forms ranging from the earliest Shih-ching hymns to late imperial novels. Each essay isolates defining features—metrical, thematic, or rhetorical—that reveal how genres both guided writers and conditioned readers’ expectations, while also providing the pressure points at which innovation and literary history emerge.

With contributions by Hans H. Frankel on yüeh-fu poetry, James J. Y. Liu on the tz’u lyric, David Hawkes on archetypes in the Ch’u-tz’u, Patrick Hanan on early hua-pen fiction, Jaroslav Průšek on storytelling culture, G. T. Hsia on “military romances,” and others, the volume models approaches that balance native Chinese criticism with comparative and theoretical insights drawn from Western traditions. For students and specialists alike, this collection demonstrates how close attention to genre illuminates not only the form and meaning of individual works, but also the broader trajectory of Chinese literary history. It remains essential reading for anyone seeking a rigorous yet flexible framework for the study of China’s vast and varied literary heritage.

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 1974.

Gary Schmidgall

Shakespeare and the Courtly Aesthetic

$95.00

Shakespeare and the Courtly Aesthetic, by Gary Schmidgall, situates *The Tempest* and the other late plays within the elaborate cultural and political framework of Jacobean court art. Schmidgall argues that to understand Shakespeare’s final dramas, one must examine the courtly aesthetic that shaped—and was shaped by—royal entertainments, masques, and visual allegories, particularly those patronized by James I. Drawing on analogies with painting, music, and spectacle, he demonstrates how Shakespeare absorbed the pressures of court taste while never being simply a partisan of court culture. Instead, his plays, and *The Tempest* above all, reflect both the allure and the dangers of a world where artifice, illusion, and spectacle could conceal as much as they revealed.

The study proceeds in two broad movements. The first half outlines the nature of the courtly aesthetic, emphasizing its rise under James and its continuities with Elizabethan culture, but also its transformation into a more baroque mode. Schmidgall carefully positions *The Tempest* within this revolution, attending to courtly traditions in masque, allegory, and political symbolism. The second half turns directly to Shakespeare’s play, analyzing its imagery, structure, and characterization in light of courtly assumptions, while acknowledging its profound ambivalence. Prospero, Ariel, Caliban, and Miranda all resonate with courtly types, but Shakespeare’s treatment of them ultimately refuses to resolve into uncritical celebration. For Schmidgall, *The Tempest* is both deeply political and strikingly comprehensive: a work of “compression and density” that condenses the inclusiveness of epic into the scope of a play. Throughout, the book insists that Shakespeare’s late style can only be appreciated by illuminating his engagement with the courtly environment, while recognizing his simultaneous skepticism toward its illusions.

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 1981.

Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse

The Imaginary Puritan

$95.00

Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse challenge traditional accounts of the origins of modern Anglo-American culture by focusing on the emergence of print culture in England and the North American colonies. They postulate a modern middle class that consisted of authors and intellectuals who literally wrote a new culture into being.

Milton's Paradise Lost marks the emergence of this new literacy. The authors show how Milton helped transform English culture into one of self-enclosed families made up of self-enclosed individuals. However, the authors point out that the popularity of Paradise Lost was matched by that of the Indian captivity narratives that flowed into England from the American colonies. Mary Rowlandson's account of her forcible separation from the culture of her origins stresses the ordinary person's ability to regain those lost origins, provided she remains truly English. In a colonial version of the Miltonic paradigm, Rowlandson sought to return to a family of individuals much like the one in Milton's depiction of the fallen world.

Thus the origin both of modern English culture and of the English novel are located in North America. American captivity narratives formulated the ideal of personal life that would be reproduced in the communities depicted by Defoe, Richardson, and later domestic fiction.

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 1992.

R. W. Dent

Proverbial Language in English Drama Exclusive of Shakespeare, 1495-1616

$85.00

Proverbial Language in English Drama, Exclusive of Shakespeare (1495-1616): An Index serves as a comprehensive reference for scholars of Renaissance drama and the use of proverbial expressions in early modern English theater. Designed as a companion to the author's earlier Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language: An Index, this volume systematically catalogs and analyzes proverbial phrases found in extant English drama from the late 15th century through the early 17th century, excluding Shakespeare’s works. The index provides a meticulous breakdown of how proverbs were employed by dramatists across this period, offering insights into language, culture, and thematic structures in the plays.

Drawing from sources such as M. P. Tilley’s Dictionary of Proverbs, B. J. Whiting’s Modern Proverbial Sayings, and E. P. Wilson’s compilations, this volume refines and supplements existing proverb collections with a rigorous method of inclusion and exclusion. It identifies proverbs that were widely recognized in early modern England and distinguishes them from idiomatic expressions, topoi, or literal references that lack proverbial status. The author also critically assesses inconsistencies in previous scholarship, offering corrections and clarifications where necessary. This invaluable resource sheds light on the ways in which proverbial wisdom shaped Renaissance drama outside of Shakespeare, providing scholars with a deeper understanding of the linguistic and rhetorical traditions that influenced early modern English theater.

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 1984.

Gilbert Norwood

Essays on Euripidean Drama

$39.95

Essays on Euripidean Drama by Gilbert Norwood is a landmark collection that reconsiders Euripides’ art through close analysis of four central plays. Written by a leading classicist of his generation, these essays take up long-standing puzzles in Euripidean criticism—from the divine epiphanies of The Bacchae, to the interplay of human and divine agency in Hippolytus, to the structural oddities of the Supplices. Norwood combines philological rigor with literary sensitivity, showing how Euripides’ dramaturgy—so often derided by ancient rivals and modern critics alike—reflects both deliberate experiment and a willingness to unsettle audience expectations.

Rather than treating Euripides as a flawed imitator of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Norwood situates him as a dramatist of restless imagination, whose sudden tonal shifts, sardonic wit, and “rescue-drama” tendencies anticipate later developments in European theater. By tracing both inconsistencies and triumphs across these plays, Essays on Euripidean Drama argues that Euripides was less a classical “lawgiver of tragedy” than a romantic innovator, inviting audiences into an art of doubt, surprise, and irony. The volume remains a touchstone for scholars and students interested in understanding why Euripides continues to divide opinion and yet exert profound influence across the centuries.

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 1954.

Edited by Cyril Birch

Studies in Chinese Literary Genres

$49.95

Edited by Cyril Birch, Studies in Chinese Literary Genres is a landmark collection that foregrounds genre as the key to understanding the evolution of China’s literary tradition. Eleven leading scholars trace the histories, functions, and transformations of forms ranging from the earliest Shih-ching hymns to late imperial novels. Each essay isolates defining features—metrical, thematic, or rhetorical—that reveal how genres both guided writers and conditioned readers’ expectations, while also providing the pressure points at which innovation and literary history emerge.

With contributions by Hans H. Frankel on yüeh-fu poetry, James J. Y. Liu on the tz’u lyric, David Hawkes on archetypes in the Ch’u-tz’u, Patrick Hanan on early hua-pen fiction, Jaroslav Průšek on storytelling culture, G. T. Hsia on “military romances,” and others, the volume models approaches that balance native Chinese criticism with comparative and theoretical insights drawn from Western traditions. For students and specialists alike, this collection demonstrates how close attention to genre illuminates not only the form and meaning of individual works, but also the broader trajectory of Chinese literary history. It remains essential reading for anyone seeking a rigorous yet flexible framework for the study of China’s vast and varied literary heritage.

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 1974.

Michael Alexander

The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound

$39.95

An introduction to Ezra Pound's work. Alexander shows how he contributed to the modernist movement through his own writing as well as through his impact on Yeats, Eliot, Joyce and others.

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 1979.
An introduction to Ezra Pound's work. Alexander shows how he contributed to the modernist movement through his own writing as well as through his impact on Yeats, Eliot, Joyce and others.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program,

Michael N. Nagler

Spontaneity and Tradition

$95.00

Spontaneity and Tradition: A Study in the Oral Art of Homer by Michael N. Nagler offers a groundbreaking reappraisal of the Iliad and the Odyssey through the lens of oral poetics. Building on the work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, Nagler demonstrates how Homer’s epics are best understood as oral-dictated performances that balance inherited formulas with the poet’s spontaneous artistry. Rather than viewing formulas and type-scenes as rigid conventions, Nagler argues that they function as dynamic resources for invention, enabling Homer to shape expansive, unified works in real time before a listening audience. Drawing on his own fieldwork with modern singers in Crete, Nagler provides a compelling analogy for how oral poets, far from being constrained, perform at their most creative when engaging an audience or even a recording device.

At once a contribution to Homeric studies and to broader debates in comparative literature, Spontaneity and Tradition reframes the “Homeric Question” by underscoring the coherence, flexibility, and depth of Homer’s art. Nagler situates the epics within a continuum of “spontaneous-traditional art,” emphasizing how oral composition-in-performance generates meaning at multiple levels—from formula and phrase to type-scene and narrative design. His analysis of textual transmission and his defense of a unitarian Homer highlight both the stability and the vitality of this tradition. Engaging with linguistics, anthropology, and literary theory, this book offers scholars a fresh perspective on Homer while modeling a method for approaching oral traditions worldwide.

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 1974.

Mark Shechner

Joyce in Nighttown

$95.00

Joyce in Nighttown offers a compelling psychoanalytic examination of James Joyce's Ulysses, positioning the novel as a complex psychological gesture both deeply personal and universally resonant. This book capitalizes on the maturity of psychoanalytic literary criticism, foregoing justifications for its method to focus on elucidating the intricate interplay between Joyce’s life, his creative process, and his magnum opus. By analyzing the recurring motifs of familial relationships, identity, and symbolic action, the text uncovers the latent conflicts underpinning Joyce's narrative innovations. It highlights how Ulysses serves as a stage for Joyce's internal struggles, particularly through its protean protagonist, Leopold Bloom, and his interwoven dynamics with Stephen Dedalus, the author’s literary alter ego.

Drawing on Freud's theories of artistic creation as sublimated personal conflicts, Joyce in Nighttown frames Ulysses as an intricate "family romance," reflecting unresolved tensions and repressed desires. The author explores Joyce's portrayal of Shakespeare through Stephen’s monologue in "Scylla and Charybdis" as a mirror of Joyce’s own creative dilemmas: art as both revelation and concealment. This psychoanalytic inquiry not only interprets Joyce’s gestures toward his Irish identity and familial legacy but also situates Ulysses as a text that engages in self-reflective dialogue. Bridging the gap between personal neuroses and public artistry, this book offers scholars an innovative lens to explore how Joyce’s life and art are inextricably bound, providing fresh insights into the emotional and intellectual architecture of one of the 20th century’s greatest literary achievements.

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 1974.

Michael Alexander

The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound

$95.00

An introduction to Ezra Pound's work. Alexander shows how he contributed to the modernist movement through his own writing as well as through his impact on Yeats, Eliot, Joyce and others.

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 1979.
An introduction to Ezra Pound's work. Alexander shows how he contributed to the modernist movement through his own writing as well as through his impact on Yeats, Eliot, Joyce and others.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program,

Joshua Whatmough

Poetic, Scientific and Other Forms of Discourse

$39.95

Poetic, Scientific, and Other Forms of Discourse: A New Approach to Greek and Latin Literature is the twenty-ninth volume in the esteemed Sather Classical Lectures series. This work delves into the interplay of language, literary criticism, and the foundational texts of Greek and Latin literature. The author advocates for a dual focus: a deep understanding of classical texts through their original languages and the pure enjoyment of literature, free from overburdened textual criticism. With a critical lens on the methodologies of textual editors, the book argues that rigid adherence to analogy and rule—whether in grammar, meter, or textual annotation—often obscures the essence of these works rather than illuminating them.

This volume positions literature as a sophisticated form of communication, emphasizing its purpose-driven nature while integrating insights from modern linguistic theories. The lectures explore how principles from diverse fields, including mathematical linguistics and systems theory, can enhance our understanding of classical texts. By synthesizing evidence across disciplines, the book not only revisits traditional interpretations but also proposes innovative approaches to appreciating Greek and Latin literature. Engaging with the broader educational implications of this approach, it blends technical exploration with personal reflection, making a compelling case for a reinvigorated, language-centered engagement with the classics.

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 1956.

Rhys Carpenter

Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics

$95.00

Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics is Rhys Carpenter’s classic exploration of the oral traditions behind the Iliad and the Odyssey. Delivered as part of the Sather Classical Lectures, this work interrogates the relationship between saga, folklore, and literary invention in Homeric poetry. Carpenter argues that the epics are not merely records of historical events, nor pure fabrications, but rather complex compositions where oral traditions—heroic saga, folk tales, fairy motifs, and narrative fiction—interweave to form the glittering fabric of Homer’s verse. By placing Homer alongside other oral traditions such as Norse sagas, the Song of Roland, and Beowulf, Carpenter demonstrates the shared mechanisms by which oral poets transformed inherited stories into powerful cultural myths.

Balancing archaeology, philology, and comparative folklore, Carpenter revisits perennial debates about the historicity of Troy, the oral transmission of heroic poetry, and the folkloric elements embedded in Homeric narrative. Chapters move from foundational questions of “literature without letters” to focused case studies, including the saga of Troy, the role of folktale motifs in the Iliad and Odyssey, and the enduring Bear’s Son myth. With wit and clarity, Carpenter shows how the seeming contradictions of Homeric epic dissolve when read as the creative fusion of oral genres, shaped both by memory and invention. This book remains a touchstone for students of classics, comparative literature, and mythology, illuminating the artistry and cultural power of one of the world’s foundational literary traditions.

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 1946.

Sheldon Sacks

Fiction and the Shape of Belief

$95.00

Fiction and the Shape of Belief explores how eighteenth-century fiction negotiates the relationship between narrative form and ethical conviction. Sheldon Sacks develops a critical “grammar” of fictional types—satire, apologue, and action—and demonstrates how each embodies belief in distinct ways. With particular attention to Henry Fielding, and comparative glances at Swift, Johnson, and Richardson, Sacks reveals how narrative strategies shape the moral and intellectual content of prose fiction. The study challenges critics who collapse diverse forms under thematic generalities, offering instead a precise framework for understanding how structure and belief cohere.

By insisting that belief is not incidental ornament but integral to fictional organization, this landmark work reframes the place of the novel in literary history. It shows that Fielding’s novels cannot be read simply as carriers of moral “themes,” but as actions whose coherence depends on the interplay of character, complication, and resolution. At the same time, the book clarifies the unique artistic demands of satire and apologue, illuminating why Gulliver’s Travels or Rasselas succeed on their own terms but fail when judged as novels. First published by the University of California Press in 1967, Fiction and the Shape of Belief remains a foundational intervention in narrative theory and eighteenth-century studies.

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 1967.

Sheldon Sacks

Fiction and the Shape of Belief

$39.95

Fiction and the Shape of Belief explores how eighteenth-century fiction negotiates the relationship between narrative form and ethical conviction. Sheldon Sacks develops a critical “grammar” of fictional types—satire, apologue, and action—and demonstrates how each embodies belief in distinct ways. With particular attention to Henry Fielding, and comparative glances at Swift, Johnson, and Richardson, Sacks reveals how narrative strategies shape the moral and intellectual content of prose fiction. The study challenges critics who collapse diverse forms under thematic generalities, offering instead a precise framework for understanding how structure and belief cohere.

By insisting that belief is not incidental ornament but integral to fictional organization, this landmark work reframes the place of the novel in literary history. It shows that Fielding’s novels cannot be read simply as carriers of moral “themes,” but as actions whose coherence depends on the interplay of character, complication, and resolution. At the same time, the book clarifies the unique artistic demands of satire and apologue, illuminating why Gulliver’s Travels or Rasselas succeed on their own terms but fail when judged as novels. First published by the University of California Press in 1967, Fiction and the Shape of Belief remains a foundational intervention in narrative theory and eighteenth-century studies.

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 1967.