In the preface to his edition of Shakespeare, Alexander Pope noted that his age was one of Parties, both in Wit and State. Much scholarship has been devoted to the complexities of the political parties of the eighteenth century, but there has been a surprising reluctance to explore what Pope implied were the corollaries of those parties, namely, parties in literature. The essays collected here explore the literary culture that arose from and supported what Pitt the Elder referred to as the great spirit of Whiggism that animated English politics during the eighteenth century. From the prehistory of Whiggism in the court of Charles II to the fractures opened up within it by the French Revolution in the 1790s, the interactions between Whiggish politics and literature are sampled and described in groundbreaking essays that range widely across the fields of eighteenth-century political prose, poetry, and the novel.

A compact collection of focused introductions to and inquiries into medieval England, representing both history and literature.

"Priestley's England is the first full-length academic study of J.B Priestley - novelist, playwright, screen-writer, journalist and broadcaster, political activist, public intellectual and popular entertainer, one of the makers of twentieth-century Britain, and one of its sharpest critics." "This book will appeal to all those interested in the culture and politics of twentieth-century Britain, in the continuing debates over 'Englishness' to which Priestley made such a key contribution, and in the life and work of one of the most remarkable and popular writers of the past century."--Jacket.

Jeremy Black turns his trenchant eye to the development of English culture since the eighteenth century - how does it reflect political and social conditions of the time? Here, Black looks at this question while offering an important and original account of English history.

The importance of integrating the teaching and learning of language and culture has been widely recognised and emphasized. However, how to teach English as an International Language (EIL) and cultures in an integrative way in non-native English speaking countries remains problematic and has largely failed to enable language learners to meet local and global communication demands. Developing students’ intercultural competence is one of the key missions of teaching cultures. This book examines a range of well-established models and paradigms from both English-speaking and non-English speaking countries. Exploring questions of why, what, and how to best teach cultures, the authors propose an integrated model to suit non-native English contexts in the Asia Pacific. The chapters deal with other critical issues such as the relationship between language and power, the importance of power relations in communication, the relationship between teaching cultures and national interests, and balancing tradition and change in the era of globalisation. The book will be valuable to academics and students of foreign language education, particularly those teaching English as an international language in non-native English countries.

A definitive collection of critical essays on the literary and cultural impact of the early modern rogue

This book takes the view that ELT global coursebooks, in addition to being curriculum artefacts, are also highly wrought cultural artefacts which seek to make English mean in highly selective ways and it argues that the textual construction (and imaging) of English parallels the processes of commodity promotion more generally.

The Making of English Popular Culture provides an account of the making of popular culture in the nineteenth century. While a form of what we might describe as popular culture existed before this period, John Storey has assembled a collection that demonstrates how what we now think of as popular culture first emerged as a result of the enormous changes that accompanied the industrial revolution. Particularly significant are the technological changes that made the production of new forms of culture possible and the concentration of people in urban areas that created significant audiences for this new culture. Consisting of fourteen original chapters that cover diverse topics ranging from seaside holidays and the invention of Christmas tradition, to advertising, music and popular fiction, the collection aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between culture and power, as explored through areas such as ‘race’, ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender. It also aims to encourage within cultural studies a renewed historical sense when engaging critically with popular culture by exploring the historical conditions surrounding the existence of popular texts and practices. Written in a highly accessible style The Making of English Popular Culture is an ideal text for undergraduates studying cultural and media studies, literary studies, cultural history and visual culture.

"Those at the periphery of society often figure obsessively for those at its center, and never more so than with the rogues of early modern England. Whether as social fact or literary fiction-or both, simultaneously-the marginal rogue became ideologically central and has remained so for historians, cultural critics, and literary critics alike. In this collection, early modern rogues represent the range, diversity, and tensions within early modern scholarship, making this quite simply the best overview of their significance then and now." -Jonathan Dollimore, York University "Rogues and Early Modern English Culture is an up-to-date and suggestive collection on a subject that all scholars of the early modern period have encountered but few have studied in the range and depth represented here." -Lawrence Manley, Yale University "A model of cross-disciplinary exchange, Rogues and Early Modern English Culture foregrounds the figure of the rogue in a nexus of early modern cultural inscriptions that reveals the provocation a seemingly marginal figure offers to authorities and various forms of authoritative understanding, then and now. The new and recent work gathered here is an exciting contribution to early modern studies, for both scholars and students." -Alexandra W. Halasz, Dartmouth College Rogues and Early Modern English Culture is a definitive collection of critical essays on the literary and cultural impact of the early modern rogue. Under various names-rogues, vagrants, molls, doxies, vagabonds, cony-catchers, masterless men, caterpillars of the commonwealth-this group of marginal figures, poor men and women with no clear social place or identity, exploded onto the scene in sixteenth-century English history and culture. Early modern representations of the rogue or moll in pamphlets, plays, poems, ballads, historical records, and the infamous Tudor Poor Laws treated these characters as harbingers of emerging social, economic, and cultural changes. Images of the early modern rogue reflected historical developments but also created cultural icons for mobility, change, and social adaptation. The underclass rogue in many ways inverts the familiar image of the self-fashioned gentleman, traditionally seen as the literary focus and exemplar of the age, but the two characters have more in common than courtiers or humanists would have admitted. Both relied on linguistic prowess and social dexterity to manage their careers, whether exploiting the politics of privilege at court or surviving by their wits on urban streets. Deftly edited by Craig Dionne and Steve Mentz, this anthology features essays from prominent and emerging critics in the field of Renaissance studies and promises to attract considerable attention from a broad range of readers and scholars in literary studies and social history.

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2017 The first social and cultural history of vagrancy between 1650 and 1750, this book combines sources from across England and the Atlantic world to describe the shifting and desperate experiences of the very poorest and most marginalized of people in early modernity; the outcasts, the wandering destitute, the disabled veteran, the aged labourer, the solitary pregnant woman on the road and those referred to as vagabonds and beggars are all explored in this comprehensive account of the subject. Using a rich array of archival and literary sources, Vagrancy in English Culture and Society, 1650-1750 offers a history not only of the experiences of vagrants themselves, but also of how the settled 'better sort' perceived vagrancy, how it was culturally represented in both popular and elite literature as a shadowy underworld of dissembling rogues, gypsies, and pedlars, and how these representations powerfully affected the lives of vagrants themselves. Hitchcock's is an important study for all scholars and students interested in the social and cultural history of early modern England.