What were Shakespeare's final thoughts on history, tragedy, and comedy? Shakespeare's Last Plays focuses much needed scholarly attention on Shakespeare's "Late Romances." The work--a collection of newly commissioned essays by leading scholars of classical political philosophy and literature--offers careful textual analysis of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, All is True, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The essays reveal how Shakespeare's thought in these final works compliments, challenges, fulfills, or transforms previously held conceptions of the playwright (...) and his political-philosophical views. (shrink)

_The first comprehensive one-volume collection of St.Thomas More’s writing__ “[A] tremendous scholarly undertaking.... Accessible and transparent to both scholars and the general audience.”—_Renaissance and Reformation__ In this book, Wegemer and Smith assemble More’s most important English and Latin works for the first time in a single volume. This volume reveals the breadth of More’s writing and includes a rich selection of illustrations and artwork. The book provides the most complete picture of More’s work available, serving as a major resource for (...) early modern scholars, teachers, students, and the general reader. (shrink)

Utopia repeatedly sets forth the rhetorical strategy of using pleasant and healing words to “enter” or “flow” or “steal into” fortresses of hardened opinion and custom without arousing warlike passions to keep them out. An important part of this strategy is the creation of a character who denounces major instances and causes of injustice but who nonetheless supports war and other means of force at the expense of law in rectifying that injustice; another part of the strategy is the creation (...) of a character and a plot that embody the “indirect” rhetorical approach aimed primarily at long-term persuasion needed to improve laws and institutions. (shrink)