Author Description

This volume brings together some of the best critical work produced by Eastern and Central European scholars. The lead-off essay is an extended study that was first published in 1947, "The Baroque in English Literature" by Marco Mincoff, Professor of English at Sofia University in Bulgaria until his death in 1987. An essay on More's Utopia (a chapter from Artur Blaim's book, Early English Utopian Fiction) follows. "The Genesis of the Double Time in Pre-Shakespearean and. Shakespearean Drama" was the first of Zdenek Stribrny's essays on Shakespeare's use of double-time, the others appearing in Shakespeare Jahrbuch: East. Many essays focus almost entirely upon Shakespeare's plays and cover such topics as the development of Shakespearean tragedy (Henryk Zbierski), a Hungarian reading of Measure for Measure (Istvan Geher), subjectivity and dramatic discourse in The Tempest (Martin Prochazka), Georg Lukacs' Shakespeare criticism (Laszlo. Kery), and Czech theatrical criticism of Shakespeare (Jan Mukarovsky). Three younger scholars contribute essays on Hamlet and the volume includes an essay by the Czech historian Josef Polisensky on England and Bohemia in Shakespeare's day that illuminates aspects of The Winter's Tale. An essay on cartographic design in Stuart masques by Polish scholar Malgorzata Grzegorzewska is also included. The aim of International Studies in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, Occasional volumes published by the University of Delaware Press, is to bring to a wider audience the work of non-Anglo-American scholars and critics whose contributions might otherwise pass relatively unnoticed. Many of the essays in this volume originally appeared in books or journals of limited or local circulation, usually in the country of their origin only, but in the opinion of the editors they deserve to be better known. A number of them, such as those on Hamlet. By Marta Gibinska, Piotr Sadowski, and Emma Szabo, are published here for the first time. All of the essays were written in English, but future volumes may focus on scholarship and criticism in languages with which Anglo-Americans are not expert. They will be translated and edited by knowledgeable scholars. The Editorial Advisory Committee, composed of leading Shakespearean and Elizabethan scholars, has helped substantially in formulating the plans for International. Studies, which is published in association with the International Shakespeare Association, Stratford-upon-Avon, England.