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Beaumarchais and Electronic Enlightenment
The addition to Electronic Enlightenment of nearly 500 letters from the Beaumarchais correspondence is a significant event in eighteenth-century studies.
Xenophon’s kinder Socrates
The idea that Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues entirely lacked the philosophical bite or intellectual depth of Plato’s had become a commonplace in a philosophical discourse which prioritised abstract knowledge over broader ethics. Dr Carol Atack makes the case for Xenophon’s kinder Socrates.
Reading Between the Lines: Bernard MacLaverty’s Grace Notes and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland
A novel about a female composer struggling with depression after the birth of her child does not, on the face of it, seem to have much to do with war or peace in Northern Ireland. But appearances can be deceiving.
Why read Proust in 2023?
The world is literally on fire; authoritarianism threatens multiple countries; racism and xenophobia are rampant; women’s and LGBTQ rights are under threat—why on earth would anyone spend time reading a 3,000-page novel by a man who’s been dead (exactly) a hundred years?
Macbeth, King James, and biting the hand that feeds you?
Possibly the most dangerous play William Shakespeare wrote was The Tragedie of Macbeth. The drama is packed with illegality: assassination of kings; prophecies about kings; supernatural women; and necromancy. To add to the danger, Shakespeare’s employer, King James, was a prickly patron of the performing arts and notorious for his sensitivity to slights, real and perceived. […]
A Black Irish-American rejoinder to Gone With The Wind: Frank Yerby’s The Foxes of Harrow
“The Foxes of Harrow” (1946), a Southern historical romance by Black Irish-American author Frank Yerby (1916–1991), writes back to Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel, “Gone with the Wind” (1936). Although Yerby and Mitchell were both raised in Georgia during segregation by mothers of Irish descent, their socially assigned racial identities created divergent approaches to representing the pre- and post-Civil War South in their respective novels.
Sir Stanley Wells and the First Folio
2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication the First Folio of William Shakespeare’s plays, which has since acquired the status of a cultural touchstone.
Women in the history of linguistics—from marginalization to recognition
Women’s history month raises issues of erasure and marginalization, authority and power which, sadly, are still relevant for women today. Much can be learnt from the experience of women in the past.
Finding Jane Austen in history
In the anniversary year marking 100 years since the publication of R. W. Chapman’s OUP edition of “The Novels of Jane Austen”, Kathryn Sutherland (Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts, OUP 2018) examines the call to reassess the contribution made to the edition by Chapman’s wife, Katharine Metcalfe.
After Burns: recovering Scottish poetry
Scottish poetry produced in the long eighteenth century might strike you as at once familiar and unknown. Hundreds of poets, balladists, and songwriters born or raised in Scotland throughout the long eighteenth century need to find new readerships.
Is Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas an Irish novel?
When Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Uncle Silas” appeared in 1864, its author was best known as the proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine and a writer of Irish historical novels. Yet, as advised by his publisher, Le Fanu had produced a work of fiction situated not in the Irish past but the English present.
“A tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide”: Shakespeare under attack
Around three years into his career as a dramatist, Shakespeare’s blank verse—his unrhymed iambic pentameter—came under attack. We might wonder whether the passage from “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit” was right?
Life of a Contrarian Writer: James Purdy’s life-changing correspondences [excerpt]
The American author James Purdy has long been considered a “lost” figure in literary studies, but he has always enjoyed a certain cult following among artists and writers interested in the fringes of society. Michael Snyder details how Purdy began making the connections that would carry him through his career.
What is “normal” anyway? How reading changes our thinking about mental health
Reading literature has us think differently, with a subtler emotional lexicon. Explore three case studies into reading for identity, expression, and mental health from the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature, and Society (CRILS).
Eight classic novels to inspire your New Year [reading list]
Are you searching for inspiration to help further your goals this new year? Reading books offers an easy yet effective way to help navigate life, so who better to turn to than authors of some well-loved Oxford World’s Classics!
A Winter Breviary: Q&A with poet Rebecca Gayle Howell
A Winter Breviary is a triptych of carols that tells the story of a person walking in the woods on solstice night. This pilgrim—she, he, they—searches for hope, the hope they cannot name, or hear or see. And still, they walk deeper and deeper into the dark.