Three decades of controversy in Shakespeare studies can be summed up in a single question: Was Shakespeare one of a kind? On one side of the debate are the Shakespeare lovers, the bardolatrists, who insist on Shakespeare's timeless preeminence as an...

Conservative thinkers of the early Middle Ages conceived of sensual gratification as a demonic snare contrived to debase the higher faculties of humanity, and they identified pagan writing as one of the primary conduits of decadence. Two aspects of t...

In his first book of poems since his highly acclaimed "June-tree", Peter Balakian continues to define himself as one of the most distinctive voices of his generation. Exploring history, self, and imagination, as well as his ongoing concerns with cata...

In a country where much of the prominent poetry seeks to affirm the fleeting present and its changing values, John Peck's poetry comes as an important, if unlikely, gift. Peck's verse deals the cards of the fragmentary, ideogramic, juxtapositional, a...

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus / and its devastation". For sixty years, that's how Homer has begun the "Iliad" in English, in Richmond Lattimore's faithful translation – the gold standard for generations of students and general re...

Jennifer Clarvoe's second book, "Counter-Amores", wrestles with and against love. The poems in the title series talk back to Ovid's Amores, and, in talking back, take charge, take delight, and take revenge. They suggest that we discover what we love...

One of America's most eminent nature poets, Robert Pack has won the acclaim of writers, critics, and readers from Stephen Jay Gould to Mark Strand. In his latest collection, "Laughter Before Sleep", Pack carries on his themes of family and friends, r...

Together Max Frisch and Friedrich Durrenmatt are not only two of the most esteemed Swiss writers of the twentieth century, but arguably two of the most important European writers since World War II. The remarkable letters gathered here document their...

In "The Tale of the Talking Face", eminent Indian artist K. G. Subramanyan offers a stinging parable of democracy gone wrong by narrating and illustrating the story of a princess whose autocratic rule brought nothing but suffering to her people, desp...

Annemarie Schwarzenbach – journalist, novelist, antifascist, archaeologist, and traveler – has become a European cult figure for bohemian free spirits since the rediscovery of her works in the late 1980s. "Lyric Novella" is her story of a young man's...