Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton

The 37 essays in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton reinterpret the English Renaissance through the lens of one of its most original, and least understood, geniuses. Shakespeare's younger contemporary and collaborator, Middleton wrote modern comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, history plays, masques, pageants, pamphlets, and poetry. The largest collection of new Middleton criticism ever assembled, this ambitious Handbook provides a comprehensive,in-depth, cutting-edge reaction to OUP's Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, winner of the 2009 MLA prize for editing, the first complete scholarly text of his voluminous and diverse oeuvre. The Handbook brings together an international, cross-generational team of experts to discuss all these genres through anequally diverse range of critical approaches, from feminism to stylistics, ecocriticism to performance studies, Aristotle to Zizek. Reinterpretations of canonical plays such as The Changeling, Women Beware Women, The Roaring Girl, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside mingle with explorations of neglected or recently-identified works. Middleton's dramatic use of dance, music, and clothing, Middletonian adaptation, his relationships to the classical world and tocontinental Europe, his fascinating explorations of sexuality and religion, all receive attention. The collection also provides new essays on modern and postmodern reactions to Middleton, including recent Middleton revivals and films, and living artists' responses to his work-responses that range from the actresses who play Middleton'swomen to writers in various genres who have been inspired by his artistry. The Handbook establishes an authoritative foundation for the rapidly-expanding growth of interest in this extraordinarily protean, funny, moving, disturbing, and modern writer.

the diversity of the individual contributions to the Handbook is as much of a pleasure as the high standard of the work as a whole and suggests the potential for more such work in the future., The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton is by turns profoundly intelligent, brazenly provocative, and thoroughly engaging. It looks at a vast array of topics while remaining faithful to its fascinating subject. More important, it fulfils its editorial intention by stirring debate and challenging convention about the plays, the playing, the players, and the playwright., This useful, edifying, well-informed volume brings together a range of essays ... this original and substantial collection of scholarship and criticism on Middleton, the first of its kind, will surely appeal to scholars, teachers, and students ... Recommended, Magnificent Middleton scholars, Middleton experts, and Middleton fans. It will overjoy them, since it's an exuberant performance from start to finish., [It] features the largest collection of Middleton criticism ever published ... highly recommended

Gary Taylor is George Matthew Edgar Professor of English at Florida State University, founder of the History of Text Technologies program there, general editor (with Stanley Wells) of the Oxford edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works, and general editor (with John Lavagnino) of the Oxford edition of Middleton's Collected Works.Trish Thomas Henley is an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati. She has published in Exemplaria, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, and Theatre Journal and is currently finishing a book manuscript, Velvet Women Within: The Boy Actor and the Prostitute on the Early English Stage.