This collection of essays reassesses a range of Shakespeare's plays in relation to carnivalesque theory. The plays discussed include: "Henry IV"; "Romeo and Juliet"; "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; "The Merry Wives of Windsor"; "Hamlet"; "Measure For Measure"; "The Winter's Tale"; and "Henry VIII". Contributors re-historicize the carnivalesque in different ways, offering both a developed application, or critique of, Bakhtin's thought.

The work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, particularly his notions of dialogics and genre, has had a substantial impact on contemporary critical practices. Until now, however, little attention has been paid to the possibilities and challenges Bakhtin presents to feminist theory, the task taken up in A Dialogue of Voices. The original essays in this book combine feminism and Bakhtin in unique ways and, by interpreting texts through these two lenses, arrive at new theoretical approaches. Together, these essays point to a new direction for feminist theory that originates in Bakhtin—one that would lead to a feminine etre rather than a feminine йcriture.

Focusing on feminist theorists such as Hйlene Cixous, Teresa de Lauretis, Julia Kristeva, and Monique Wittig in conjunction with Bakhtin's concepts of dialogism, heteroglossia, and chronotope, the authors offer close readings of texts from a wide range of multicultural genres, including nature writing, sermon composition, nineteenth-century British women's fiction, the contemporary romance novel, Irish and French lyric poetry, and Latin American film. The result is a unique dialogue in which authors of both sexes, from several countries and different eras, speak against, for, and with one another in ways that reveal their works anew as well as the critical matrices surrounding them.

 

In both feminist theory and Shakespearean criticism, questions of sexuality have consistently been conflated with questions of gender. This book, refusing to adopt this approach, instead details the intersections and contradictions between sexuality and gender in the early modern period. It argues that desire and anxiety constitute the erotic in Shakespearean drama - circulating throughout the dramatic texts, traversing "masculine" and "feminine" sites, eliciting and expressing heterosexual and homoerotic fantasies, embodiments and fears. Taking heterosexuality and homoeroticism equally seriously, the book presents a non-normalizing account of the unconscious and institutional prerogatives that comprise the erotics of Shakespearean drama. Employing feminist, psychoanalytic and new historical methods, using each to interrogate the other, the book implements a synthesis of the psychic and the social, the individual and the institutional. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and academics in the field of Shakespearean studies, Renaissance literature and cultural, gender  studies.

This volume bridges the gap between theory and practice by bringing together well-known and new authors to discuss a topic of mutual interest to second language researchers and teachers alike: input. Reader-friendly chapters offer a range of existing and new perspectives on input in morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology.

This is a completely updated and expanded second edition of Language, Society and Power. Lively and accessible, it looks at the ways in which language functions, how it influences thought and how it varies according to age, ethnicity, class and gender. How can a language reflect the status of children and older people? Do men and women talk differently? How can our use of language mark our ethnic identity? The book also looks at language use in politics and the media and examines how language affects and constructs our identities, exploring notions of correctness and attitudes towards language use.