Developing the arguments of Terence Hawkes' "That Shakespeherian Rag" (1986), this book uses the work of influential critics to question whether we could have any genuine access to final, authoritative or essential meanings in respect of Shakespeare's plays. Implicitly and explicitly, it argues that all we can ever do is use Shakespeare as a powerful element in specific ideological strategies. Traditionally, critics, producers, actors and audiences of Shakespeare have assumed that the "meaning" of each play is bequeathed to it by the Bard and lies within its text.
Original in topic and approach, Searching Shakespeare presents a political-historical exploration of Shakespeare's drama, examining the plays in the context of current ideological concerns - history, memory, marginality, and nationalism. Derek Cohen predicates his argument on the supposition that the individual, as much as the encompassing state, is subject to the shaping forces and machinery of the ideological surround.
The sixteenth-century England Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, enjoyed great domestic and international renown as a favourite of Elizabeth I. He was a soldier and a statesman of exceptionally powerful ambition. After his disastrous uprising in 1601 Essex fell from the heights of fame and favour, and ended his life as a traitor on the scaffold. This interdisciplinary account of the political culture of late Elizabethan England explores the ideological contexts of Essex's extraordinary career and fall from grace, and the intricate relationship between thought and action in Elizabethan England.
Arguments about the practice of the duel in early modern England were widespread. Markku Peltonen, the distinguished intellectual historian, examines the debate, and reveals how the moral and ideological status of duelling was considered within a much broader cultural context of courtesy, civility and politeness. Understanding the duel involves knowing crucial issues in the cultural and ideological history of Stuart England. Peltonen's wide-ranging study engages the attention of a significant audience of historians and cultural and literary scholars.
The Wild and the Tame - Essays in Cultural Practice
A university booklet for the students of English literature and culture. Contains thirteen texts devoted to the notion of "wildness" in British and American literature. The main theme is presented in various cultural, ideological and philosophical contexts. See the table of content for more details.