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1049 books match the query 'English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh' and 6 start with k

cover of Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence

Katherine Parr

Complete Works and Correspondence

Katherine Parr

University of Chicago Press, 2011

To the extent that she is popularly known, Katherine Parr (1512–48) 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, Parr also began, out of necessity, to learn Spanish when she ascended to the throne in 1543. As Henry’s wife and queen of England, she was a noted patron of the arts and music and took a personal interest in the education of her stepchildren, Princesses Mary and Elizabeth and Prince Edward. Above all, Parr commands interest for her literary labors: she was the first woman to publish under her own name in English in England.

           

For this new edition, Janel Mueller has assembled the four publications attributed to Parr—Psalms or Prayers, Prayers or Meditations, The Lamentation of a Sinner, and a compilation of prayers and Biblical excerpts written in her hand—as well as her extensive correspondence, which is collected here for the first time. Mueller brings to this volume a wealth of knowledge of sixteenth-century English culture. She marshals the impeccable skills of a textual scholar in rendering Parr’s sixteenth-century English for modern readers and provides useful background on the circumstances of and references in Parr’s letters and compositions. Given its scope and ambition, Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence will be an event for the English publishing world and will make an immediate contribution to the fields of sixteenth-century literature, reformation studies, women’s writing, and Tudor politics.

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cover of Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse

Keats's Odes

A Lover's Discourse

Anahid Nersessian

University of Chicago Press, 2021

“When I say this book is a love story, I mean it is about things that cannot be gotten over—like this world, and some of the people in it.”
 
In 1819, the poet John Keats wrote six poems that would become known as the Great Odes. Some of them—“Ode to a Nightingale,” “To Autumn”—are among the most celebrated poems in the English language. Anahid Nersessian here collects and elucidates each of the odes and offers a meditative, personal essay in response to each, revealing why these poems still have so much to say to us, especially in a time of ongoing political crisis. Her Keats is an unflinching antagonist of modern life—of capitalism, of the British Empire, of the destruction of the planet—as well as a passionate idealist for whom every poem is a love poem.

The book emerges from Nersessian’s lifelong attachment to Keats’s poetry; but more, it “is a love story: between me and Keats, and not just Keats.”  Drawing on experiences from her own life, Nersessian celebrates Keats even as she grieves him and counts her own losses—and Nersessian, like Keats, has a passionate awareness of the reality of human suffering, but also a willingness to explore the possibility that the world, at least, could still be saved. Intimate and speculative, this brilliant mix of the poetic and the personal will find its home among the numerous fans of Keats’s enduring work.
 
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cover of Keats's Reading of the Romantic Poets

Keats's Reading of the Romantic Poets

Beth Lau

University of Michigan Press, 1991

Keats's Reading of the Romantic Poets offers the first comprehensive analysis of Keats’s familiarity with the works of his most famous contemporaries: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley. Beth Lau considers a variety of questions: which volumes and individual poems Keats read, what editions he used, when he read them, where he might have acquired copies, and why he read and responded as he did to certain works at particular periods of his life. The book presents a complex, detailed portrait of Keats's intellectual relationships with the major poets of his age.This study situates Keats in the literary climate of his time and provides Keats scholars with a reliable record that may assist future intertextual, influence, biographical, or critical studies. While previous work has concentrated on Keats's debt to Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, and other great Renaissance and Medieval writers, the most significant influences on a poet's style and outlook are generally contemporary sources. In fact, Keats's very interest in Renaissance and Medieval poetry and drama was a taste he shared with his age. Keats's Reading of the Romantic Poets, in laying the groundwork for a new examination of the poet in relation to the literature of his time, helps us to see the Romantic poets as a genuine literary group that read and responded to one another's works.Each chapter contains an essay and checklists that conveniently organize information on Keats's familiarity with each of the other poets’ publications. The checklists also distinguish reliable evidence — direct references and quotations, items in Keats's library, and statements by people who knew Keats — from more conjectural echoes and allusions. The essays draw conclusions from the information presented in the checklists and consider other types of evidence that do not lend themselves to a checklist format. One source of such evidence is the libraries and literary tastes of Keats's friends: people like Charles Cowden Clarke, Leigh Hunt, Benjamin Robert Haydon, John Hamilton Reynolds, Benjamin Bailey, and William Hazlitt, who were influential in shaping Keats's opinions about literature. In fact, the book may be considered a study of two levels in Keats's relationship to his contemporaries: his literary relationships with the major poets of his day, and his personal interactions with an immediate circle that helped stimulate and focus his reading and thinking about poetry.Keats's Reading of the Romantic Poets is an important reference work for scholars and critics interested in Keats, in the connections among the major poets of the early nineteenth century, and in biography and social history. The book’s clear, jargon-free prose makes it accessible to a variety of students and scholars.
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cover of Kindred Hands: Letters on Writing by British and American Women Authors, 1865-1935

Kindred Hands

Letters on Writing by British and American Women Authors, 1865-1935

Jennifer Cognard-Black

University of Iowa Press, 2006

Kindred Hands, a collection of previously unpublished letters by women writers, explores the act and art of writing from diverse perspectives and experiences. The letters illuminate such issues as authorship, aesthetics, collaboration, inspiration, and authorial intent. By focusing on letters that deal with authorship, the editors reveal a multiplicity of perspectives on female authorship that would otherwise require visits to archives and special collections.

Representing some of the most important female writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including transatlantic correspondents, women of color, canonical writers, regional writers, and women living in the British empire, Kindred Hands will enliven scholarship on a host of topics, including reception theory, feminist studies, social history, composition theory, modernism, and nineteenth-century studies. Moreover, because it represents previously unpublished primary sources, the collection will initiate new discussions on race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and gender with an eye to writing at the turn of the twentieth century.
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cover of King John

King John

William Shakespeare

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2023

A rousing contemporary translation of Shakespeare’s classic exploration of early English monarchy.
 
In this modern take on Shakespeare’s King John, Brighde Mullins navigates the political twists and turns of early English monarchy. Mullins’s translation parses Shakespeare’s language carefully, with a focus on its sonic qualities. Her version focuses on the listener, developing the play for the immense pleasure of it—the fortuitous juxtapositions of the fates of these characters.
 
This translation of King John was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
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cover of King Lear

King Lear

William Shakespeare

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2022

A new translation of Shakespeare’s great tragedy that renews it for today’s audiences.
 
Marcus Gardley’s translation of King Lear renews the language of one of Shakespeare’s most frequently staged tragedies for a modern audience. Gardley’s update allows audiences to hear the play anew while still finding themselves in the tragic midst of Shakespeare’s play.
 
This translation of King Lear was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
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