Analyzes Spenser’s Red-Cross Knight and Shakespeare’s Edgar as chivalric knights in the tradition of English chivalric romance, and compares these writers’ attitudes toward the knights and the chivalry which they represent. Finds that, contrary to common interpretation, Spenser is the more modern, Shakespeare the more medieval, in their regar…[Read more]

Establishes the division of characters between Maria/Toby/Feste and Malvolio, and their respective behaviors, characteristics, and values; shows the difficult, though sanctioned position, in which Malvolio’s role as steward places him; and traces Olivia’s (and later Orsino’s) regard for him in that role. Correlates the dichotomy between the two d…[Read more]

Though many studies of contemporary Buddhist literature exist, such studies often limit their purview to canonised, ‘high-brow’ authors. In this article, I read Janwillem van de Wetering’s The Japanese Corpse, a detective novel, for how it portrays Zen Buddhism. I show that The Japanese Corpse portrays Zen as non-dualist and amoral: good and bad a…[Read more]

0. Preliminaries provide the usual guides to contents and graphics, and an unusual statement of acknowledgments. It also provides a preface which explains my approach to prevent possible misapprehensions because of its debt to, but also its departure from, source and influence studies. It addresses various critical issues: genre because of…[Read more]

Chapter 1: Introduction provides on overview of the nature of English chivalric romances and an explanation of the historical circumstances of its particular vogue in late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England. It examines the biases in literary criticism—literary supersession and literary prefigurement, and neo-classical definitions of and r…[Read more]

Chapter 2: The Survival of English Chivalric Romances provides an account of the documentary evidence of manuscripts, entries, printings, and adaptations which detail the survival of English chivalric romances. The discussion considers other cultural artifacts and related literary kinds which include materials from the tradition of these romances…[Read more]

Chapter 3: The Significance of English Chivalric Romances describes the main features of English chivalric romances: all-embracing idealism; overarching motifs, like separation-and reunion, exile-and-return, sieges, and quests; typical characters: ladies, knights, stewards true or false, and fair unknowns; amatory motifs: courtly love,…[Read more]

Chapter 4: Macbeth: Loyal Stewards and Royal Succession views the play as a romance defined by its overarching structure as exile-and-return of the rightful and qualified successor to the throne. Malcolm proves himself worthy in the Court Scene in England, where his test of Macduff demonstrates his ability, superior to his father’s, to establish “…[Read more]

Chapter 5: Hamlet: Courtly Revenge and Chivalric Succession sets Hamlet’s confusion about the appeal of a chivalric figure as a figure of justice and the ghost’s injunction to courtly revenge for adultery and incest at least as much as murder, in the larger context of the struggle between Denmark and Norway. Whatever befalls Hamlet occurs in the…[Read more]

Chapter 6: Othello: Courtly Love and Chivalric Justice explains the sudden onset of Othello’s jealousy in terms of the known propensities of intermediaries in courtly love to betray their function and thereby alter perceptions of relationships among lady, lover, and their go-between. It interprets the dichotomies between Venice and the Levant on t…[Read more]

Chapter 7: King Lear: Courtly Romance and Chivalric Restoration sees the opening perversions of and developing machinations of courtly love as means leading to the undoing of Edmund, Goneril, and Regan. It sees Edgar, the instrument of their undoing, fulfilling his obligations to father and godfather, as the fair unknown made so by internal exile…[Read more]

Entries identify chapter and page.

“Appendix: Census of English Chivalric Romances through 1616” compiles data on manuscripts, printings, entries, and adaptations of English chivalric romances from standard sources: Short-Title Catalogue, Annals of the English Drama 975-1700, and the Stationers’ Register, among others. Tabulations of the data through 1610 serve as the basis for t…[Read more]

Reflects all works cited or consulted in preparing this book. The disproportion between pre-1970 and post-1970 works reflects the greater and lesser relevance, respectively, of most work in the field of English chivalric romance to my thesis. Recent scholarship has approach the subject less from a literary and historical than from a political,…[Read more]

An attempt to think about authorial strategies of dislocation and relocation in 1 Peter. First presented at a conference on Early Christianity and its urban environment held at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham, England, 2015.

This textual crux all modern editors unanimously and silently emend, from the Folio “he”, their copy text, to the Quarto “you.” Although they find F so nonsensical as to deserve no comment, Shakespeare, his company, and his audience found it not only sensible in a play involving jealousy, but also powerful. The difference between then and now…[Read more]

Surveys the contemporary and modern designations of the genre of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Considers the gothic, not the humanistic, character of chivalric romance and the range of chivalric romances both idealistic and satirical. Accepting the medieval treatment of The Iliad as chivalric in nature, views Shakespeare’s play as a com…[Read more]

Sounding Islam provides a provocative account of the sonic dimensions of religion, combining perspectives from the anthropology of media and sound studies, as well as drawing on neo-phenomenological approaches to atmospheres. Using long-term ethnographic research on devotional Islam in Mauritius, Patrick Eisenlohr explores how the voice, as a site…[Read more]

This thesis compares the recent rise and decline of two political uses of cultural tradition, one in India and one in Singapore. In India, the thesis examines the Hindutva (Hindu-ness) movement, which became influential in the 1980s and 1990s. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which leads India’s current coalition government, arose from the Hindutva m…[Read more]

This dissertation examines the idea of ethical revaluation — taking things we normally see as good for our flourishing and seeing them as neutral or bad, and vice versa — in the Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker Śāntideva. It shows how Śāntideva’s thought on the matter is more coherent than it might otherwise appear, first by examining the consistency…[Read more]