Had shahrazad lived today she might have been on the first boat of middle eastern refugees to europe, posits the theater director Mahmoud al-Hurani in his new play 1001 Titanics. First performed in September 2015 by the Arab Puppet Theatre at the Metro al Madina Theater in Beirut, the play toured in Lebanese refugee camps throughout the fall. In al-Hurani's play Shahrazad tells the tale of a skinny boy named Ahmad, a refugee driven by the fall of rockets from his quaint village to an unnamed Arab metropolis symbolized by the paper cutout of a skyline of high rises. The production relies on silhouette, puppetry, and mime to tell its story. In one climactic scene, two characters play cards over an upturned fan, and when a cutout of a missile drops to the stage their cards are blown into oblivion.

This essay combines a history of publication with a discussion of the sonic dimensions of Roger Williams's seventeenth-century Narragansett-English vocabulary, A Key into the Language of America, modeling one way literary scholars might think beyond print-centric analyses. Drawing on historical reprintings as well as Native American linguistic reappropriations of A Key, I argue that cross-cultural encounter emerges most powerfully in relation to Williams's text not as a vestige of the past, accessible through the dialogues or the language, but as a function of the text's reproduction, the audiences' imagination of its reproducibility, and the points at which it fails to be a mimetic record.

Don Quixote, having shared the goatherds' rustic meal on his second sally, takes up a handful of acorns and launches into his lecture on the Golden Age: “Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquellos a quien los antiguos pusieron nombre de dorados, y no porque en ellos el oro, que en esta nuestra edad de hierro tanto se estima, se alcanzase en aquella venturosa sin fatiga alguna, sino porque entonces los que en ella vivían ignoraban estas dos palabras de tuyo y mío” ‘Blessed the time, and blessed the centuries, called by the ancients the Golden Age—and not because, then, the gold which we in our age of iron so value came to men's hands without effort, but because those who walked the earth in that time knew nothing of those two words, thine and mine.’ Bewildering as his harangue was for the listening goatherds, Don Quixote's introduction invites consideration of the location, ownership, and definition of the Spanish “Golden Age.” These aspects illuminate the challenge the period presents to early modern studies and vice versa.

The global linguasphere is in a state of ecological and humanitarian crisis. In a powerful meditation in pmla, simon gikandi notes that the loss of any language (and of a culture sustained by it) is worthy of mourning and that language death around the globe is a matter of urgent collective concern. Relating great emotion when the “UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger confronted me with the bleak reality of language endangerment measured in maps, graphs, and data sets,” he ponders the ethical and political stakes of widespread language loss (9). He ends by quoting (and translating) a poem by the anthropologist Miguel León-Portilla “captur[ing] what happens when a language dies” (13), and he builds to a stark closing dictum: “Letting a language die is an injustice, a denial of will to those who speak it” (14). In this forceful essay, metaphorical discourse of language death gives way to a poignant elegy that registers a strong affective and political investment in the sustainment of languages.

Entre las polémicas literarias que hallaron campo propicio en la España del siglo XVII, ninguna fue acaso tan enconada como aquélla a que dió lugar la publicación del Para todos del doctor Juan Pérez de Montalbán. No bien salían de las prensas de Madrid los ejemplares del debatido libro, en mayo de 1632, cuando todo un alud de sátiras, libelos, ataques y contraataques vino a caer sobre su joven autor, victima inocente de las reyertas en que se habían visto envueltos Góngora, su maestro Lope, y sus amigos Luis Pacheco de Narváez y fray Diego Niseno. La mas célebre de estas sátiras (y, al mismo tiempo, la más despiadada, y la primera, cronológicamente, entre las que han llegado hasta nosotros) es la Perinola de Quevedo que, aunque no corrió de molde hasta el siglo siguiente, alcanzó en seguida gran difusión manus-crita, como se echa de ver por sus numerosos textos del mismo siglo XVII que han llegado hasta nosotros. De ella, al decir de un contemporáneo, “en brève tiempo se sacaron tantas copias que en cualquiera taberna y bodegón, con ser excesivo su número, se hallaban a pares.”

The reputation of Bartholomew Fair has undergone some curious revolutions over the years. In its own day, and during the Restoration period, it seems to have been one of the most widely admired of Jonson's plays, but later generations came to judge it more harshly, tending to dismiss it as another example of the generally acknowledged decline in Jonson's artistic powers that was traced from the high point he had attained in the three preceding comedies, Volpone, Epicene, and The Alchemist, down to the final works that Dryden called his “dotages.” More recently, however, the critical pendulum has been swinging in the opposite direction, and by now we have seen a number of students of Jonson who are prepared to discuss this play with the same respect accorded to the three “major comedies,” and even a few who claim to find in it “the culmination of the dramatist's comic art.”

Charles Lamb exhibited the same genial attitude toward books as toward people; he never expected too much of either, and was therefore seldom disappointed. This whimsical tolerance was especially evident in his reactions to prose fiction. He never went at a novel too seriously—with hammer and tongs, as we say; yet he could distinguish between the enduring works and the pulp. Moreover, he professed to like the same qualities in books as in people: individuality, personality, and even eccentricity. In 1821 he disclaimed a taste for the external events in narrative fiction, contrasting his attitude with that of his sister: “Narrative teases me. I have little concern with the progress of events. She must have a story.... The fluctuations of fortune in fiction ... and almost in real life ... have ceased to interest, or to operate but dully upon me. Out of the way humours and opinions—heads with some diverting twist in them—the oddities of authorship please me most” (ii, 75). There is, however, ample evidence that Lamb read widely in prose fiction and enjoyed the works of the great eighteenth-century masters—Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. He also was acquainted with the writings of Sterne, Goldsmith, Henry Mackenzie, Robert Paltock, Aleman, Cervantes, Jane and Maria Porter, Godwin, Scott, and many figures of less note, including the Minerva Press offerings. As Lamb himself put it, “Defoe was always my darling” (i, 524). In 1829, at the request of his friend Walter Wilson, Lamb wrote a critical essay on Defoe's secondary novels for Wilson's book Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel Defoe.4

Coinciding roughly with the establishment of the Third Republic, there developed in France a wave of anti-Semitism that was to lead ultimately to the Dreyfus affair. Thousands of Jews had moved to Paris, Marseilles, and Lyons after Germany took Alsace and Lorraine, bringing with them competition in finance, as well as a thick accent and coarse manners. It was also at this time (1882) that the great Catholic bank, the Union Générale, failed, ruining thousands of small investors. The action of the government in suddenly arresting for fraud the President and the Director of the firm just as they were attempting to rebuild their bank, and the subsequent accusation by the President, Eugène Bontoux, that the Jews, in league with the “Freemason” government, were responsible for having ruined him because he was a Christian, gave rise to one of the great anti-Semitic myths of the age. It was fully exploited by Edouard Drumont in La France juive (1886), a book that was widely sold and passionately discussed.

Among the Biblical types which Milton used to enrich his theme in Paradise Lost was that of Abraham, father of the faithful. James Sims has shown the parallel between the visit of the angels to Abraham at Mamre and Raphael's descent to Eden in Book v; John Parish has elaborated the resemblance between Abraham's plea for the Sodomites and Adam's dialogue with God in Book viii; and Barbara Lewalski has emphasized the spiritual vision of the man of faith in Books xi and xii: Abraham and his heirs view the promises “afar off,” just as Adam at this point sees far off the great symbolic Old Testament places. It is the purpose of this article to explore further the Abraham-Adam parallel in the last two books, showing in particular the relationship between Abraham's departure from Ur and Adam's from Paradise. From this relationship flow certain effects: the tone of the concluding episodes of Paradise Lost becomes clearer, their universal significance is emphasized, and the exile motif is harmonized with the concept of the journey of the epic hero. The virtues of Abraham are precisely those which Adam as Christian hero is called upon to practice, while both Abraham's setting forth to the land of Canaan and Adam's exile from Paradise are types of man's setting forth on his earthly pilgrimage.

Molière's career as an actor-manager would be largely a matter of conjecture today but for the preservation of four account books now in the archives of the Comédie-Française. Of these documents, the two earliest have been published in extenso; first, the “Registre de La Grange” entitled Extraict des Receptes et des Affaires de la Comédie depuis Pasques de l'année 1659, appartenant au Srde La Grange, l'un des Comédiens du Roy, with a biographical notice by Édouard Thierry, published by the Comédie-Française in 1876; and secondly, Le Premier Registre de La Thorilliére (1663–64), published in 1890 in an edition of 340 copies in the Nouvelle Collection Moliéresque of D. Jouaust, with preface and notes by Georges Monval, archivist of the Comédie-Française in 1878 and librarian in 1885. I assume that Monval intended to publish the two account books remaining in the archives of his theater, known traditionally as the Second Registre de La Thorilliére (1664–65), and the Registre d'Hubert (1672–73), for Monval announced the former as in press in 1890, and in 1897 it was still advertised as in preparation. However, Damase Jouaust, Monval's publisher, died in 1893, and his successor, the Flammarion firm, only completed the publication of a series of plays by Molière edited by Vitu and Monval. The last volume of this edition, Monval's Chronologie Moliéresque, appeared in 1897.

Hooker's eloquent and persuasive argument that Annus Mirabilis was written as an antidote to several poisonous tracts of the time has been accepted by nearly all of Dryden's critics, but I believe that he has underestimated Dryden by calling the poem “simple and lucid” (p. 49). Simple Dryden rarely was, and if we find the poem lucid, it may be because we overlook an intricate, yet unified system of alchemical and astrological metaphors. As the practice of alchemy and its peculiar jargon has lapsed into obscurity, so have Dryden's allusions to it. Though the explicit reference to “Chymick flame” in stanza 293 has been noticed, it is thought to be an isolated allusion with no relation to the frequent images of the phoenix, the apostrophe to the King, the mention of Jove, the allusion to the New Jerusalem, and, most significantly, to the fact that the poem's entire action concerns either fire or water.

Early English stage melodrama was one version of a melodramatic mode that pervaded the nineteenth century in response to the effects of a growing market culture, especially the classificatory procedures of government bureaucracies and the concomitant formation of a class society. By examining the relation between this genre and the rioters who initiated the “Old Price Wars” in Covent Garden Theatre in 1809, I show how melodrama resisted a class society by supporting more traditional status hierarchies. Melodrama represented the contemporary confrontation between these two distinctive forms of social organization as a family conflict that included the audience. By means of climactic moments of audience participation in its plot, melodrama elicited the spectators' recognition of their own familial ties and therefore facilitated a symbolic reunion that both reflected and encouraged the behaviors of the Old Price rioters, who materially resisted the introduction of market relations into the theater.

Coleridge, more than any other man in the England of his time, sensed what were the significant currents of thought then in the civilized world, although his recognition of many of these ideas seems instinctive rather than conscious. Coleridge was often a prophet who saw as in a glass darkly. But though darkly, he saw—or, at least, felt.

The question of the dignity of man and his place in the universe was much discussed in the Renaissance. With an inflated idea of their departure from medieval tradition, the thinkers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tried hard to arrive at a new, “humanistic,” evaluation of man. We know now, of course, that their departure was not as sharp as they thought and that certain traditional arguments persisted in one form or another. Herschel Baker, in his study, The Dignity of Man, published in 1947, showed the persistence of some themes and the introduction of others, especially in the Neoplatonic and Protestant thinkers. It is the purpose of this article to examine the way in which the question was handled by Montaigne, who was up to date in his readings on the subject and who had the advantage of coming at the end of the Continental Renaissance; to determine the extent of his departure from tradition, the paths which he followed in his thinking, and the degree of independence which he exercised. Since man is the central subject of the Essais, Montaigne's opinions are likely to be well thought out and carefully formulated. The material presented here can hardly be new; it is the sweep and originality of Montaigne's views that need to be pointed out.'

Mr. H. M. Chadwick departs from current views about the early settlers of Great Britain and challenges Bede's long-accepted classification of them as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. He believes them to have been a homogeneous people, their dialectic differences having come about after the immigration and through political and geographical influences. He opposes the prevailing notion that the Anglo-Saxon organization at the time of the migration was “tribal,” and thinks that the invasion was accomplished by large organized bands, not by small groups of adventurers acting independently. The migration of the Angli Mr. Chadwick regards as exceptional. Although there was no external pressure, it was on a large scale and extended over a considerable space of time. And, he says, according to the constitution of military forces of the time, the warriors required to make up the forces of invasion were not all drawn from within the territories of the Angli, but came, many of them, from the surrounding regions.

Any survey of Hawthorne's life makes it apparent that he was not a churchgoing man. On the other hand, a study of Hawthorne's works discloses that he was a religious man in whose outlook the Christian heritage was cardinal. With respect to its traditional theology he was more orthodox than not: With the basic spirit of Christianity, as it informed values and viewpoints, he was thoroughly imbued. With its institutionalized forms, however, he had no direct affiliation after his youth. It is true that his environment was still Christian externally and that he could draw upon the reserves of Christian culture accumulated by centuries of tradition in America and Europe. But the burden of his faith rested heavily upon himself.

In film studies the work of Alfred Hitchcock has often been considered misogynist, and feminist critics have assumed that the female spectator can enjoy the films only by adopting the position of a masochist or the perspective of a man. An analysis of Blackmail, however, reveals that women's relation to the text is much more complicated than has generally been supposed. The film is constructed as an elaborate joke on the heroine, who, as in the Freudian paradigm, is ultimately transformed into an object between two male subjects; nevertheless, because much of the film stresses her subjectivity, a reading that insists on woman's point of view and experience becomes possible. This reading, which activates the word rape—a term seldom used in analytical discussions of the film's central episode—has serious implications for feminist critics in their struggle for interpretive truth.

The language, action, setting, and characterization of The Prairie cohere around the idea of man as one species of animal among many. On one level, man is a hunter, dominating the other beasts upon whom he is dependent for food and clothing. On another level, man is a scientist, subjecting the beasts to study, classification, and control. On a third level, the novel observes man as an animal of ambiguous identity. The various groups of characters exemplify differing varieties of humanity. The barbaric Indians and the angelic Inez are opposing extremes in dehumanizing characterization. Ellen and Paul display the conflicting demands of feeling, reason, and conscience on the typical middle ground of human nature. In the most dramatic aspect of the romance, the Bush family is forced by pressure of extraordinary circumstance from a brutal, lawless existence into a troubled consciousness of human guilt, justice, and mortality. Finally, in the aged and dying Leather-Stocking is represented a rare example of a fully human life achieved at the most primitive remove from mere animality.

Students of The Canterbury Tales have devoted relatively slight attention to the incident of the Canon at Boughton under Blee and to his Yeoman's tale, and even of this they have not given much to the Canon himself. H. G. Richardson and J. M. Manly investigated possible historical models for him, and Marie P. Hamilton has shown that he was a Canon Regular. But apart from these, discussion has been confined mainly to the sources and extent of Chaucer's alchemical knowledge, the possible audience for the tale considered apart from the Canterbury group, and the character of the Yeoman, so much more fully developed than that of his master.