The English Miscellany

  This new collection reveals that Shakespeare’s plays have always been embroiled in political and cultural debates. From the Elizabethan/Jacobean stage to modern classrooms, his works provoke conversation, challenge conventions, and ignite controversy. Nonetheless, Shakespeare’s central position in the traditional cultural establishment is facing renewed scrutiny as some critics start to question whether his works should still occupy a prime position on the syllabus and the stage. Debates about “woke” ideology—emerging in part out of the earlier “culture wars”—have stimulated renewed interest in the role of various schools of critical enquiry, ranging from feminism and gender to queer theory, postcolonialism and race to cultural materialism, global studies to eco-criticism, social class to social justice. The essays in this new collection provide a forum for more diverse voices and debates, seeking to explore how to engage with modern social and political issues in transformativ...