This expansive, inter-disciplinary guide to Renaissance plays and the world they played to gives readers a colorful overview of England's great dramatic... age.Provides an expansive and inter-disciplinary approach to Renaissance plays and the world they played to. Offers a colourful and comprehensive overview of the material conditions of England's most important dramatic period. Gives readers facts and data along with up-to-date interpretation of the plays. Looks at the drama in terms of its cultural agency, its collaborative nature, and its ideological complexity.

This Companion illustrates the vitality and diversity of dramatic work 1660 to 1710. Twenty-five essays by leading scholars in the field bring together... the best recent insights into the full range of dramatic practice and innovation at the time.Introduces readers to the recent boom in scholarship that has revitalised Restoration drama Explores historical and cultural contexts, genres of Restoration drama, and key dramatists, among them Dryden and Behn

A Companion to Science Fiction assembles essays by an international range of scholars which discuss the contexts, themes and methods used by science... fiction writers. This Companion conveys the scale and variety of science fiction. Shows how science fiction has been used as a means of debating cultural issues. Essays by an international range of scholars discuss the contexts, themes and methods used by science fiction writers. Addresses general topics, such as the history and origins of the genre, its engagement with science and gender, and national variations of science fiction around the English-speaking world. Maps out connections between science fiction, television, the cinema, virtual reality technology, and other aspects of the culture. Includes a section focusing on major figures, such as H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula Le Guin. Offers close readings of particular novels, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

A Companion to Shakespeare is an indispensable book for students and teachers of Shakespeare, indeed for anyone with an interest in his plays. Contains... 28 newly commissioned essays written by the most distinguished historians and literary scholarsSituates Shakespeare in the historical and cultural conditions in which he wrote

The Companion to Social Archaeology is the first scholarly work to explore the encounter of social theory and archaeology over the past two decades.... Grouped into four sections - Knowledges, Identities, Places, and Politics - each of which is prefaced with a review essay that contextualizes the history and developments in social archaeology and related fields. Draws together newer trends that are challenging established ways of understanding the past. Includes contributions by leading scholars who instigated major theoretical trends.

A Companion to Television is a magisterial collection of 31 original essays that charter the field of television studies over the past century Explores... a diverse range of topics and theories that have led to television’s current incarnation, and predict its likely futureCovers technology and aesthetics, television’s relationship to the state, televisual commerce; texts, representation, genre, internationalism, and audience reception and effectsEssays are by an international group of first-rate scholarsFor information, news, and content from Blackwell's reference publishing program please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/reference/

A Companion to the American South surveys and evaluates the most important and innovative writing on the entire sweep of the history of the southern... United States. Contains 29 original essays by leading experts in American Southern history. Covers the entire sweep of Southern history, including slavery, politics, the Civil War, race relations, religion, and women's history. Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic. Summarizes current debates and anticipates future concerns.

A Companion to the American West is a rigorous, illuminating introduction to the history of the American West. Twenty-five essays by expert scholars... synthesize the best and most provocative work in the field and provide a comprehensive overview of themes and historiography. Covers the culture, politics, and environment of the American West through periods of migration, settlement, and modernization Discusses Native Americans and their conflicts and integration with American settlers

A Companion to the Ancient Near East offers students and general readers a comprehensive overview of Near Eastern civilization from the Bronze Age to... the conquests of Alexander the Great. Covers the civilizations of the Sumerians, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Israelites and Persians Places particular emphasis on social and cultural history Covers the legacy of the Ancient Near East in the medieval and modern worlds Provides a useful bibliographical guide to this field of study

This Companion is comprised of 27 original contributions by leading scholars in the field and summarizes the state of anthropological knowledge of... Indian peoples, as well as the history that got us to this point. Surveys the full range of American Indian anthropology: from ecological and political-economic questions to topics concerning religion, language, and expressive culture Each chapter provides definitive coverage of its topic, as well as situating ethnographic and ethnohistorical data into larger frameworks Explores anthropology’s contribution to knowledge, its historic and ongoing complicities with colonialism, and its political and ethical obligations toward the people 'studied'

This Companion offers an unprecedented overview of anthropology’s unique contribution to the study of politics. Explores the key concepts and issues... of our time - from AIDS, globalization, displacement, and militarization, to identity politics and beyond Each chapter reflects on concepts and issues that have shaped the anthropology of politics and concludes with thoughts on and challenges for the way ahead Anthropology’s distinctive genre, ethnography, lies at the heart of this volume

A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment offers original essays that examine historical and contemporary approaches to... conceptualizations of the body.In this ground-breaking work on the body and embodiment, the latest scholarship from anthropology and related social science fields is presented, providing new insights on body politics and the experience of the bodyOriginal chapters cover historical and contemporary approaches and highlight new research frameworksReflects the increasing importance of embodiment and its ethnographic contexts within anthropologyHighlights the increasing emphasis on examining the production of scientific, technological, and medical expertise in studying bodies and embodiment

This new expanded and updated edition contains more than 500 notes keyed to the 2006 Harper Perennial Modern Classics, the 1986 Harper Perennial... Library, and the 1967 Bantam editions. The majority of notes are interpretive, although some are designed to provide a historical context or to recover the meaning of a reference that, over time, has proved to be ephemeral. This new edition adds quotations and paraphrases drawn from criticism published since 1994. The result is more than seventy new entries in the list of works cited. More than fifty annotations have been added and approximately eighty annotations have been expanded.

The essays collected here on the Gawain-Poet offer stimulating introductions to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness and Patience,... providing both information and original analysis. Topics include theories of authorship; the historical and social background to the poems, with individual sections on particularly important features within them; gender roles in the poems; the manuscript itself; the metre, vocabulary and dialect of the poems; and their sources. A section devoted to Sir Gawain investigates the ideas of courtesy and chivalry found within it, and explores some of its later adaptations from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. A full bibliography completes the volume.

This Companion is a standard reference work for scholars and students of the Gothic from its origins to the present day. Providing stimulating insights... into Gothic writing, its history and genealogy, it offers coverage of criticism of the Gothic and of the various theoretical approaches it has inspired and spawned.