Since its launch in 1987, Textual Practice has established itself as Britain's leading journal of radical literary theory. This Special Issue of Textual Practice examines the theme of Desire.

The split between national and popular interests is examined through an analysis of Branagh's 'multicultural' Much Ado - 'a Shakespeare film for the world' and analysis of other popular works including Cocteau, Woolf and Neil Jordan's.

In this issue some of the most influential critics in the field encounter their colleagues in debate: A sad tale's best for South AfricaMartin Orkin;Shakespeare and Hanekom, King Lear and landNicholas Visser;Questioning Robert Young's post-colonial criticismLaura Chrisman;Response to Laura ChrismanRobert Young;Making love to our employment, or the immateriality of arguments about the materiality of the Shakespearean textEdward Pechter;Lover among the ruins: response to PechterMargreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass;Busy doing nothing: a response to Edward PechterGraham Holderness, Bryan Loughrey and Andrew Murphey;'Is she fact or is she fiction?': Angela Carter and the enigma of womanAnne Fernihough;The new romanticism: philosophical stand-ins in English Romantic discoursePaul Hamilton

Since its launch in 1987 TP has been Britain's principal international journal of radical literary studies, continually pressing theory into new engagments.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

In this volume Textual Practice brings together some of its most pressing concerns by exploring the interaction of texts with language, politics, gender and history. Textual Practice has a theoretical approach that crosses over into a range of other, apparently disparate, disciplines: philosophy, history, law, medicine, science, architechtrure, gender, and media studies. Key Features: * Features the most exciting new voices and the most influential new scholars in the field * Multidisciplinary * Includes two articles on Ireland _ _ _

A general issue of Textual Practice with the usual combination of scholarly discourse and reviews. This book should be of interest to academics and students of literature, literary criticism, media studies and philosophy.

Volume 10, Issue 3- Papers include: Tragedy and the nationalist condition of criticism "Thomas Doucherty"--Descartes, Baudrillard, Dryden and a consideration of cultural relations between England and France in the late seventeenth century.ILaodamia and the moaning of Mary "John" "Barrell"--changing critical responses to Wordsworth's "heroic version of masculinity." Melodrama as Avant-garde: enacting a new subjectivity "Simon Shepherd"--nineteenth-century English radicals and translations of French melodrama. The diasporic imaginary: theorizing the Indian diaspora "Vijay Mishra;" Bisexuality, heterosexuality and wishful theory "Jonathan Dollimore. Reviews, index. Holcroft ""IA Tale of Mystery, --a melo-drame" and ICaleb Williams.

Focusing on 18th century sexuality, the contributors present intriguing, controversial and provoking articles relating to women, popular culture, visual media, and ethnic and sexual minorities.

Anne Blackburn explores the emergence of a predominant Buddhist monastic culture in eighteenth-century Sri Lanka, while asking larger questions about the place of monasticism and education in the creation of religious and national traditions. Her historical analysis of the Siyam Nikaya, a monastic order responsible for innovations in Buddhist learning, challenges the conventional view that a stable and monolithic Buddhism existed in South and Southeast Asia prior to the advent of British colonialism in the nineteenth century. The rise of the Siyam Nikaya and the social reorganization that accompanied it offer important evidence of dynamic local traditions. Blackburn supports this view with fresh readings of Buddhist texts and their links to social life beyond the monastery. Comparing eighteenth-century Sri Lankan Buddhist monastic education to medieval Christian and other contexts, the author examines such issues as bilingual commentarial practice, the relationship between clerical and "popular" religious cultures, the place of preaching in the constitution of "textual communities," and the importance of public displays of learning to social prestige. Blackburn draws upon indigenous historical narratives, which she reads as rhetorical texts important to monastic politics and to the naturalization of particular attitudes toward kingship and monasticism. Moreover, she questions both conventional views on "traditional" Theravadin Buddhism and the "Buddhist modernism" / "Protestant Buddhism" said to characterize nineteenth-century Sri Lanka. This book provides not only a pioneering critique of post-Orientalist scholarship on South Asia, but also a resolution to the historiographic impasse created by post-Orientalist readings of South Asian history.