Andrew Hiscock Knihy

Authority and Desire focuses on the complexity of political discourse in a selection of Shakespeare's Jacobean dramas and Racine's tragedies. Particular attention is paid to the relations dramatised between the transforming communities of the governing and the governed in these plays. This wide-ranging study reveals how the formulation of such relations is profoundly involved with the cultural theorising of authority (linked to the legitimising forces of caste, kinship, gender expectation, sanctification and so on), and with the politics of human desire stimulated by the cultural spectacles of power assertion.

Exploring the dynamic interplay between memory and historical transformation, this book delves into the impact of radical cultural and political shifts on early modern England. It examines how these changes influenced collective memory and shaped societal perspectives during a pivotal era. The analysis offers insights into the complexities of memory as both a personal and communal experience, highlighting its role in understanding the past.

Providing close readings of Shakespeare's history plays, compelling insights into late Elizabethan politics and renewed attention to neglected contemporary accounts of Elizabeth I from across Europe, this book uncovers the truly international environment through which the final years of the last Tudor monarch should be understood.

In a series of ten historical and literary studies, this volume analyses the complex narrative of changing political identities in early modern Europe and maps out some of the dominant ways in which ‘European-ness’ was articulated in documents of the period. As the collection unfolds, its contributors explore these themes from a whole range of geographical perspectives, including not only accounts of British culture, but also those describing cultural relations and political identities with regard to Italy, Spain, France, the Papacy, the Netherlands, Bohemia and the Americas, for example. Concentrating upon early modern nations at a time when they were just beginning to formulate recognizable collective identities, the studies contained in this volume offer a clear picture of the ways in which current literary and historical scholarship may yield penetrating insights into the broader question of how the very idea of Europe evolved amongst its native inhabitants during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.