By Graham Bradshaw (NHC Fellow, 1989–90) Just at the moment when conflicts between critical "isms" are threatening to turn the study of English literature into a game park for endangered texts, Graham Bradshaw arrives with a work of liberating wit and insight. His subject is double: the Shakespeare he reads and the Shakespeare that critics … Continued
By J. R. Green (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) In Theatre in Ancient Greek Society the author examines the social setting and function of ancient Greek theatre through the thousand years of its performance history. Instead of using written sources, which were intended only for a small, educated section of the population, he draws most of his evidence from … Continued
Edited by J. R. Green (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) and Axel Seeberg
By Irène Eynat-Confino (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) The book reveals how the fantastic is used in modern theatre as a manipulative device to encode the unspeakable and control audience response, challenging conventional readings of all authors who use the fantastic.
By Michèle Longino (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) Michele Longino examines the ways in which Mediterranean exoticism alters the themes in French classical drama through the exploration of such plays by Corneille, Moliere and Racine as Le Cid, Medee, and Le bourgeois gentilhomme among others. She considers the role that the staging of the near Orient played … Continued
By Alice Kessler-Harris (NHC Fellow, 2006–07) Lillian Hellman was a giant of twentieth-century letters and a groundbreaking figure as one of the most successful female playwrights on Broadway. Yet the author of The Little Foxes and Toys in the Attic is today remembered more as a toxic, bitter survivor and literary fabulist, the woman of whom Mary McCarthy said, … Continued
By Catherine M. Cole (NHC Fellow, 2006–07) South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions helped to end apartheid by providing a forum that exposed the nation's gross human rights abuses, provided amnesty and reparations to selected individuals, and eventually promoted national unity and healing. The success or failure of these commissions has been widely debated, but … Continued
Edited by Brenda Murphy (NHC Fellow, 1981–82) William Dean Howells has long been recognized as the chief spokesman for post-1880s American Realism. Most of his writing appeared in popular magazines, however, and has been lost to us. This collection brings together for the first time his most significant essays about American drama written between 1875 … Continued
By Jonathan Dollimore (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) When it was first published, Radical Tragedy was hailed as a groundbreaking reassessment of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. An engaged reading of the past with compelling contemporary significance, Radical Tragedy remains a landmark study of Renaissance drama. The third edition of this critically acclaimed work includes a new foreword by … Continued
By Brenda Murphy (NHC Fellow, 1981–82) The importance of Native American realism is traced through a study of the evolution of dramatic theory from the early 1890s through World War I and the uniquely American innovations in realistic drama between world wars.