contextualizing the duo’s work within british comedy, shakespeare criticism, the history of sexuality, and their own historical moment, this book offers the first sustained analysis of the 20th century’s most successful double-act.  over the course of a forty-four-year career (1940-1984), eric morecambe & ernie wise appropriated snippets of verse, scenes, and other elements from seventeen of shakespeare’s plays more than one-hundred-and-fifty times.  fashioning a kinder, more inclusive world, they deployed a vast array of elements connected to shakespeare, his life, and institutions. rejecting claims that they offer only nostalgic escapism, hamrick analyses their work within contemporary contexts, including their engagement with many forms and genres, including variety, the heritage industry, journalism, and more.  ‘the boys’ deploy shakespeare to work through issues of class, sexuality, and violence.  lesbianism, drag, gay marriage, and a queer aesthetics emerge, helping to normalize homosexuality and complicate masculinity in the ‘permissive’ 1960s. 

the collapse of the soviet union forced russia to engage in a process of nation building. this involved a reassessment of the past, both historical and cultural, and how it should be remembered. the publication of previously barely known underground and émigré literary works presented an opportunity to reappraise «official» soviet literature and re-evaluate twentieth-century russian literature as a whole.

this book explores changes to the poetry canon - an instrument for maintaining individual and collective memory - to show how cultural memory has informed the evolution of post-soviet russian identity. it examines how concerns over identity are shaping the canon, and in which directions, and analyses the interrelationship between national identity (whether ethnic, imperial, or civic) and attempts to revise the canon. this study situates the discussion of national identity within the cultural field and in the context of canon formation as a complex expression of aesthetic, political, and institutional factors. it encompasses a period of far-reaching upheaval in russia and reveals the tension between a desire for change and a longing for stability that was expressed by attempts to reshape the literary canon and, by doing so, to create a new twentieth-century past and the foundations of a new identity for the nation.

ranging from antiquity to contemporary analytic philosophy, it provides a concise but thorough analysis of the arguments developed by some of the most outstanding philosophers of all times. besides the aesthetics of music proper, the volume touches upon metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, psychology, anthropology, and scientific developments that have influenced the philosophical explanations of music. starting from the very origins of philosophy in western thought (pythagoras, plato, aristotle) the book talks about what music is according to augustine, descartes, leibniz, rousseau, kant, hegel, the romantics, schopenhauer, nietzsche, wittgenstein, susanne langer, bloch, adorno, and many others. recent developments within the analytic tradition are illustrated with particular attention to the ontology of the musical artwork and to the problem of music and emotions. a fascinating idea which recurs throughout the book is that philosophers allow for a sort of a secret kinship between music and philosophy, as means to reveal complementary aspects of truth.

this book explores the formative correlations and inventive transmissions of anglophone arab representations ranging from early-twentieth-century mahjar writings to contemporary transnational palestinian resistance art. tracing multiple beginnings and seminal intertexts, the comparative study of dissonant truth-making presents critical readings in which the notion of cross-cultural translation gets displaced and strategic unreliability advances to an essential quality of the discussed works' aesthetic devices and ethical concerns. questioning conventional interpretive approaches, it shows what anglophone arab studies are and what they can become from a radically decentered relational point of view.

peter paul rubens (1577–1640) proudly described his monumental painting prometheus bound as first among “the flower of my stock.” this singular work demonstrates how rubens engaged with and responded to his predecessors michelangelo and titian, with whom he shared an interest in depictions of physical torment. the wrath of the gods offers an in-depth case study of the flemish artist’s creative process and aesthetic, while also demonstrating why this particular painting has appealed to viewers over time.

many scholars have elaborated on rubens’s affinity for titian, but his connection to michelangelo has received far less attention. this study presents a new interpretation of prometheus bound, showing how rubens created parallels between the pagan hero prometheus and michelangelo’s risen christ from the sistine chapel’s last judgment. christopher d. m. atkins expands our understanding of artistic transmission by elucidating how rubens synthesized the works he saw in italy, spain, and his native antwerp, and how prometheus bound in turn influenced dutch, flemish, and italian artists. by emulating rubens’s composition, these artists circulated it throughout europe, broadening its influence from his day to ours.