Over the course of a fifty-year career, Donald E. Westlake published nearly one hundred books, including not one but two long-running series, starring the hard-hitting Parker and the hapless John Dortmunder. In the six years since his death, Westlake...

"King Lear" is perhaps the most fierce and moving play ever written. And yet there is a curious puzzle at its center. The figure to whom Shakespeare gives more lines than anyone except the king – Edgar – has often seemed little more than a blank, ign...

To the extent that she is popularly known, Katherine Parr (1512-1548) is the woman who survived King Henry VIII as his sixth and last wife. She merits far greater recognition, however, on several other fronts. Fluent in French, Italian, and Latin, Pa...

Though modern readers no longer believe in the four humors of Galenic naturalism – blood, choler, melancholy, and phlegm – early modern thought found in these bodily fluids key to explaining human emotions and behavior. In "Humoring the Body", Gail K...

In this study, David Seale argues that Sophocles's use of stagecraft, which has thus far received little attention, was as sophisticated as that of Aeschylus or Euripides. His discussions of the physical and visual elements of Sophocles's seven plays...

From its beginnings in "Twilight" fan-fiction to its record-breaking sales as an e-book and paperback, the story of the erotic romance novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" and its two sequels is both unusual and fascinating. Having sold over seventy million...

Modern theory needs a history lesson. Neither Marx nor Nietzsche first gave us theory – Hegel did. To support this contention, Andrew Cole's "The Birth of Theory" presents a refreshingly clear and lively account of the origins and legacy of Hegel's d...

Eighteenth-century British culture is often seen as polite and sentimental – the product of an emerging middle class. Simon Dickie contests these assumptions in "Cruelty and Laughter", a wildly enjoyable but shocking plunge into the forgotten comic l...

Material culture has long played a vital role in the American literary imagination, yet scholars in literary and cultural studies have only recently (re)discovered the object world as a subject of critical inquiry. Contemplating the aesthetic and nar...

Jane Austen completed only six novels, but enduring passion for the author and her works has driven fans to read these books repeatedly, in book clubs or solo, while also inspiring countless film adaptations, sequels, and even spoofs involving zombie...