Product Description: "And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story." - William Shakespeare"This book is intended for the reader and theater-goer who loves Shakespeare's plays and enjoys contemplating them in their complexity: the richness of metaphorical language, the characters' psychological depths and dimensions, the philosophical implications of the plays as organic dramatic entities that testify to the nature of human limitation and human freedom...read more

Product Description: Matthew Campbell explores the work of four Victorian poets--Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins and Hardy--in the context of their concern with questions of human agency and will. Through close study of meter, rhyme and rhythm, Campbell reveals how closely, for these poets, questions of poetics are related to issues of psychology, ethics and social change...read more

Product Description: The author analyzes "old masteries," certain notions of freedom, individualism, and control long associated with the Renaissance, in relation to the ideologies of non-mastery that recur in theory today.