Review of The Halberd at Red Cliff: Jian’an and the Three Kingdoms, by Xiaofei Tian (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018)

Shakespeare scholarship has long been interested in the temporal dynamics of The Winter’s Tale, and has often turned to melancholic or traumatic time frames to explain the thematic persistence of lost time in Shakespeare’s romance. In this chapter, I argue that dance provides a key interpretive framework for understanding the play’s interest in bo…[Read more]

In his essay “The Poet,” Emerson called for the poet who would sing the burgeoning nation of the United States of America. The answer to his request far exceeded all his expectations in the form of a ground-breaking volume of poems where Walt Whitman sang not only a nation, but the people who inhabited it as the people incarnated the values, str…[Read more]

A paper describing an undergraduate course on science and literature in the Italian cultural tradition.

A paper describing an undergraduate course on science and literature in the Italian cultural tradition.

What would English literary history look like if the unit of measure were not the political reign but the poetic tradition? The earliest poems in English were written in alliterative verse, the meter of Beowulf. Alliterative meter preceded tetrameter, which first appeared in the twelfth century, and tetrameter in turn preceded pentameter, the…[Read more]

In 1 Henry IV, Falstaff enacts his histrionic mock deposition scene, only to be usurped by England’s true heir, Prince Hal. Irate at his actorly demotion, Falstaff praises his own performance skills, while suggesting that, if found lacking, he should receive a punishment befitting his knightly status. Likening Falstaff to small game hanging in a s…[Read more]

By contextualizing the trope of the “unaccommodated man” within Aristotelian notions of insufficiency, this article demonstrates that King Lear theorizes a communitarian politics, rather than one founded in sovereign authority. For late sixteen-century thinkers such as Richard Hooker, Pierre La Primaudaye, and Robert Persons, the vulnerability of…[Read more]

El Cid Campeador, obra teatral de Antonio Enríquez Gómez (1660-1663), se publicó reiteradamente a lo largo del siglo XVIII y los primeros años del XIX. La obra, casi desconocida hoy en día, gozó de una popularidad enorme entre 1700 y 1830, tanto en el teatro como en la imprenta, debido en parte a su tema histórico y el estilo barroco, tan de gus…[Read more]

Prendendo spunto dal sonetto 94 delle Rime di Gaspara Stampa, il mio saggio si propone di analizzare l’atteggiamento di sottomissione nei confronti dell’amato da parte della poetessa, contrastandolo con i momenti in cui Stampa ricatta l’amato, minacciando di offuscarne la gloria grazie al proprio ruolo di autrice. A partire da queste dichi…[Read more]

Composed during the most difficult years of Ludovico Ariosto’s relationship with the Este court, the Satire are known for presenting a picture of their author as a simple, quiet-loving man, and also as a man who can speak only the truth. However, the self-portrait offered by the Satire of the author as a man incapable of lying stands in direct c…[Read more]