Ramona Wray

In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of four major film directors to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Focusing on the work of Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Grigori Kozintsev and Franco Zeffirelli, each essay assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the film director covered and of the film director on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare.

The last two decades have transformed the field of Renaissance studies, and Reconceiving the Renaissance: A Critical Reader maps this difficult terrain. Attending to the breadth of fresh approaches, the volume offers a theoretical overview of current thinking about the period. Collecting in one volume the classic and cutting-edge statements which define early modern scholarship as it is now practised, this book is a one-stop indispensable resource for undergraduates and beginning postgraduates alike. Through a rich array of arguments by the world's leading experts, the Renaissance emerges wonderfully invigorated, while the suggestive shorter extracts, topical questions and engaged editorial introductions give students the wherewithal and encouragement to do some reconceiving themselves.

Wray argues that women participated in many kinds of literary discourse, such as poetry, drama, fiction, autobiography, advice books and religio-politico treatises. Covering the work of all the important women writers of the period it introduces readers to a range of women's writing across the breadth of the 17th century.

Wray argues that women participated in many kinds of literary discourse, such as poetry, drama, fiction, autobiography, advice books and religio-politico treatises. Covering the work of all the important women writers of the period it introduces readers to a range of women's writing across the breadth of the 17th century.

The essays in this volume read the Shakespeare films of the 1990s as key instruments with which western culture confronts the anxieties attendant upon the transition from one century to another. Such films as Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost, Othello, Shakespeare in Love and William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , the contributors maintain, engage with some of the most pressing concerns of the present, apocalyptic condition - familial crisis, social estrangement, urban blight, cultural hybridity, literary authority, the impact of technology and the end of history. The volume includes an exclusive interview with Kenneth Branagh.