representations of the body in middle english biblical drama combines epistemological enquiry, gender theory and foucauldian concepts to investigate the body as a useful site for studying power, knowledge and truth. intertwining the conceptualizations of violence and the performativity of gender identity and roles, estella ciobanu argues that studying violence in drama affords insights into the cultural and social aspects of the later middle ages. the text investigates these biblical plays through the perspective of the devil and offers a unique lens that exposes medieval disquiets about christian teachings and the discourse of power. through detailed primary source analysis and multidisciplinary scholarship, ciobanu constructs a text that interrogates the significance of performance far beyond the stage.

in the last half-century ludwig wittgenstein's relevance beyond analytic philosophy, to continental philosophy, to cultural studies, and to the arts has been widely acknowledged.

wittgenstein's tractatus logico-philosophicus was published in 1922 - the annus mirabilis of modernism - alongside joyce's ulysses, eliot's the waste land, mansfield's the garden party and woolf's jacob's room. bertolt brecht's first play to be produced, drums in the night, was first staged in 1922, as was jean cocteau's antigone, with settings by pablo picasso and music by arthur honegger. in different ways, all these modernist landmarks dealt with the crisis of representation and the demise of eternal metaphysical and ethical truths. wittgenstein's tractatus can be read as defining, expressing and reacting to this crisis. in his later philosophy, wittgenstein adopted a novel philosophical attitude, sensitive to the ordinary uses of language as well as to the unnoticed dogmas they may betray. if the gist of modernism is self-reflection and attention to the way form expresses content, then wittgenstein's later ideas - in their fragmented form as well as their "ear-opening" contents - deliver it most precisely.

understanding wittgenstein, understanding modernism shows wittgenstein's work, both early and late, to be closely linked to the modernist geist that prevailed during his lifetime. yet it would be wrong to argue that wittgenstein was a modernist tout court. for wittgenstein, as well as for modernist art, understanding is not gained by such straightforward statements. it needs time, hesitation, a variety of articulations, the refusal of tempting solutions, and perhaps even a sense of defeat. it is such a vision of the linkage between wittgenstein and modernism that guides the present volume.

the great slavic medieval epic, the igor tale, recounts the story of a russian prince who leads his men into battle against the mongols. in 1935, soviet scholar p.n. berkov began to compile a bibliography of western european translations of the poem, later followed by several soviet union biographies compiling the works on the epic that had appeared in the russian empire or the soviet union. here, cooper attempts to remedy the shortcomings of previous scholar work: to seriously survey the large body of non-soviet scholarship on the poem particularly western contributions to igor scholarship. originally published in 1978, cooper traces foreign scholarship and translations from 1900-1976 from a wide variety of western and some eastern nations including the united states, great britain, france, italy, poland, japan and many other countries. this title is a valuable resource for students of literature and slavic studies.