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The beautiful Marquise de Banneville meets a handsome marquis, and they fall in love. But the young woman is actually a young man (brought up as a girl and completely in the dark about her—or his—true sex), while the marquis is actually a young woman who likes to cross-dress. Will they live happily ever after?
In the introduction, Joan DeJean presents the fascinating puzzle of authorship of this lighthearted gender-bending tale written in the late seventeenth century in France.
“All prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote,“ remarked Lionel Trilling about the novel that influenced writers ranging from Fielding to Faulkner. Approaches to Teaching Cervantes’ Don Quixote brings together resources and strategies for teaching the novel to undergraduates. Although beginning instructors and nonspecialists might be expected to profit most from this collection, even seasoned Cervantistas will discover much of interest to them and their students.
Like other books in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” evaluates texts, translations, reference works, secondary sources, and aids to teaching. In the second part, “Approaches,” fifteen essays reflect on ways to make Don Quixote come alive for students, explain the interpretive underpinnings behind selected strategies for teaching the novel, examine the work’s oral and written language traditions, discuss the protagonist as the archetypal baroque man, and describe successful ways of presenting Don Quixote to nonmajors.
Perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest play, King Lear is likely the one most often taught at the undergraduate level, but many instructors agree that it may also be the most daunting to teach. A survey conducted for this collection of essays found several common difficulties teachers face in presenting the play: the inability of students to empathize with an old man, bewilderment caused by the pessimistic vision of the play and its ending, difficulty in conveying the universality of the play, and confusion over complex imagery. Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s King Lear suggests ways that teachers can meet these challenges and make King Lear engaging and accessible.
The volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” surveys the editions of King Lear most used by instructors, lists recommended readings for students and teachers, and discusses audiovisual materials available for classroom use. In the second part, “Approaches,” sixteen teachers share ideas for teaching King Lear in different settings, from freshman survey courses to seminars devoted entirely to the play. The essays present overviews of the play from a variety of critical perspectives as well as describe specific approaches, such as focusing on theme and character, discussing dramatic and philosophical contexts, and analyzing the roles of the written text and of oral and visual performance.
A companion volume to Wing’s Short-Title Catalogue, this book provides the first comprehensive union list of all known British serials of the period. Each serial is listed alphabetically by first title. The first entry for a particular periodical includes a uniform title along with inclusive dates, format, average length, periodicity, editor or author (if known), and bibliographical references. Subsequent issue-by-issue entries list title, number, inclusive dates, place, imprint, year, and the libraries holding a copy of that issue.
The volume contains six indexes, covering period, editor or author, publisher or printer, place, language, and subject. Of particular usefulness for historians is a month-by-month chronological index.
The most comprehensive edition of Antony and Cleopatra ever produced, this volume is a guide to everything of significance known about the tragedy. It is divided into four main parts:
The volume also reproduces seven major source texts: Plutarch’s Life of Marcus Antonius and Comparison of Demetrius with Antonius, Goulart’s Life of Octavius Caesar Augustus, Appian’s Romanes Warres, Pembroke’s Antonius, and Daniel’s Tragedie of Cleopatra and Letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius. A bibliography and an index conclude the work.
Replacing the Variorum Edition of 1907, this volume is indispensable for all academic libraries and for students and scholars of Shakespeare.
Inaugurated in the 1860s and the standard reference edition of Shakespeare’s work, the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare continues the tradition of the original Variorum editions of the early nineteenth century. The New Variorum editions are valuable resources for an international audience of scholars, students, directors, actors, and general readers. Overseen by two general editors and an MLA committee, the production of each edition is conducted by a team of scholars and researchers working over a number of years.
“Milton’s influence on later poets and his debt to earlier ones,” writes the editor of this book, “define him as central to the study of English literature.” Of all Milton’s works, Paradise Lost is his supreme and most influential accomplishment, but the scope of the epic, the difficulties in its form, and the strangeness of its contexts challenge student and teacher alike. The essays collected here will help teachers at all levels make Milton’s poem accessible to today’s students.
The volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews editions of Paradise Lost and of other works by Milton and surveys anthologies, reference works, background resources, and critical studies. In the second part, “Approaches,” seventeen teachers, most of whom have taught Paradise Lost regularly for years, offer suggestions for presenting the work in the classroom. The first group of essays provides overviews of the epic and ways of introducing it to students. The next section offers specific teaching strategies, which range from approaching Paradise Lost by first reading Milton’s sonnets to dealing with his treatment of Eve and of relations between the sexes. The final group suggests teaching the backgrounds and contexts of the poem, including the contemporary response to Paradise Lost and the epic’s many allusions to classical literature.
The plays of Molière are immensely popular with both teachers and students, perhaps because, as the editors of this collection of essays observe, they are “immediately accessible despite their being firmly rooted in the French seventeenth-century tradition.” Noted Molière scholars suggest ways to present the plays, focusing on Tartuffe—”an easy play to teach, for beginning students and advanced graduate students alike find it engaging”— and also discussing his other dramatic works.
Frequently identified in French literary histories as the first modern novel—that is, the first to focus on its characters’ thoughts and feelings instead of their heroic actions—Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves has provoked discussion and strong opinions since it was published in 1678. Today instructors use this increasingly popular novel not only in French literature courses but also in comparative literature courses, women’s studies courses, and theme-oriented courses; but its unfamiliar historical setting can be daunting to contemporary classes. In the words of the editors, this collection aims to “give colleagues . . . a sense of seventeenth-century France and show how the novel is a product of this milieu, for these are the keys to making the novel comprehensible and indeed enjoyable to students.”
This collection of essays, the second Approaches volume devoted to Shakespeare (the first discussed King Lear), covers four of the Bard’s later plays: The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and Pericles. Developed from a survey of ninety-three faculty members who teach these romances, the volume presents both practical and imaginative approaches to presenting the works in the classroom.
Like other books in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” evaluates editions of the plays, recommends readings for students and teachers, and suggests aids to teaching. In the second part, “Approaches,” the first five essays treat the late romances as a group, connecting them with Shakespeare’s tragedies and with political discourse of the period, examining the father-daughter theme and viewing them as family romance, and defining the dramaturgy of the late romances. The remaining thirteen essays focus on specific plays and explain how to use performance, audiovisual aids, and various historical and critical approaches to enhance the plays’ presentation.
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