William Shullenberger

Modern literary scholarship has traced the ways in which a distinctly modern sense of selfhood and subjectivity, and of the individualist liberal society in which such a self takes shape, emerges from the drama and poetry of the early seventeenth century. John Milton, writer of the greatest long poem in English, Paradise Lost, takes up the challenge of modern character and social formation from Shakespeare and Donne and their contemporaries. He begins this task in his own early maturity, some thirty years before the publication of his great epic, with A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle,I>, more commonly known as Comus. There has not been a major book-length study of Milton's Maske in the past twenty years, so Lady in the Labyrinth fills a major gap in Milton and Renaissance criticism. It comprehensively surveys, evaluates, and integrates recent and traditional criticism of Comus in the context of Milton's other work, while developing new directions for study, focusing anthropological and psychological analysis on the poem's characters and mythological dimensions. Parallels between the ritual elements of the Maske and the rites of passage of non-European cultures will widen the horizons of both canonically based and multiculturally engaged scholars and writers. The book's study of Milton's identification with his female hero, and his advocacy of womens ethical, sexual, and political autonomy, gives a jolt to ongoing debates about Milton and feminism. The first of Milton's heroes of Christian Liberty, the fifteen-year-old Lady who performs in his Maske, is also the first of his characters to act out this transformation of human identity. Lady in the Labyrinth treats Comus, first performed in 1634, as a rite of passage for its Lady, and for the emerging culture whose hopes are invested in her. Displaying in song, argument and dance such character qualities as inferiority, self-consciousness, flexibility, and independence, the Lady gives vital form to

Africa Time depicts the experiences and observations of two scholars who spent two years teaching at Makerere University in Uganda from a literary, religious and political point of view. It assesses the cultural, political, and educational prospects of contemporary Uganda, often challenging the preconceptions of typical western thought in regard to the future of Africa. It exposes the resilience, resourcefulness, and hospitality of Uganda's people as they recover from a tragic postcolonial history and shows the growing strength of the family, churches, and markets in response to the turnaround taking place. Most prominently, the authors show the deepening awareness of cultural complexity as time exposes their assumptions and political attitudes associated with the African people through very personal observations and responses. Other topics covered include conditions of learning and life at the university; the roles, expectations, and education of women; "tribalism" African- and American-style; the politics of language and the language of politics; the complex riches of hospitality codes and the delicate boundaries and networks of intercultural friendships; the natural and human ecology of Africa's wildlife preserves; American literature in Ugandan context; and the critical and prophetic role of African writing.