Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1994.

A critical look at the impact of electronic text on literary culture and the experience of reading.  Birkerts argues that electronic texts threaten the frail balance of a reading ecology and declares a "reading war," in regard to hypertext saying to ,"Refusei t."  Birkerts provides a counterargument to the nature of he Prodigal Daughter Project.

 A study of readers, authors and libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries in relation to the advent of print.  A final section of the book compares the printing revolution with the invention of electronic text comparing trends of the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries such as the dissemination of materials, extensive versus intensive reading, and the invention and pursuit of bibliographies with the pursuit of the internet as a "library without walls."  Chartier also examines the changing nature of authors and readers in light of such revolutions.  His argument provides an optimistic, altruistic view for the potention of the internet to provide universal accessibility of texts to a reader at any location.

A response to criticism of scholarly research on the web.  McGann defends the experiementation of interactive hypertext editions of texts and criticism as new tools for editing imaginative texts.  McGann emphasizes the ability of hypertext to enhance the "user's perspective."  The article goes beyonf the technical scope of the Prodigal Daughter project, but holds out possibilities as to the potential of such endeavors.

A criticism of hypertext and the decentralization of texts.  Potter argues that hypertext is insufficient in using its technologies to promote understanding and critical thinking.  Furthermore, he cites hypertext as not living up to its claim as being a reader-driven medium, giving examples of how hypertext is still authored to guide the reader. He also sites the lack of legitimacy and the instability of electronic texts as pitfalls of the form. Potter asserts that here will not be a textual revolution due to hypertext as there was to the printing press, and that readers will return to more traditional methods of reding and researching through books.

Coulter, Cornelia. "The 'Terentian' Comedies of a Tenth-Century Nun," in The Classical Journal, vol. 24, 1929, pp 515-529.

Davidson, Clifford, "The Middle English Saint Play and its Iconography," in The Saint Play in Medieval Europe, Clifford Davidson, ed. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1986, p. 31-32.

DeLuca, Kenneth. "Hrosvit’s Imitation of Terence," in Classical Folia, vol. 28, 1974 pp 89-102.

Duckworth, George E., The Nature of Roman Comedy. Princeton Universit y Press: Princeton, NJ, 1971.

Hroswitha of Gandersheim,  "The Prefaces of Roswitha" and Paphnutius in The Plays ofRoswitha, Christopher St. John, ed., New York: Benjamin Blom, 1923.

Kuehne, Oswald Robert. A Study of the Thais Legend With Special Reference to Hroswitha’s Paphnutius. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1922.

Roberts, Arthur J. "Did Hroswitha Imitate Terence?," MLN XVI (1901). col. 480

Terence, Eunuchus in The Complete Comedies of Terence: Modern Verse Translations, Palmer Bovie, ed. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1874.

Wasson, John. "The Secular Saint Plays of the Elizabethan Era," in The Saint Play in Medieval Europe, Clifford Davidson, ed. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1986, pp 241-260.

Wong, Cynthia Josephine Pietrak. "Female Roles in Plays of Hroswitha and Terence: The Autonomy of Celibacy," Ohio State University, 1981.

Young, Karl. The Drama of the Medieval Church. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1933.
 
 

Closet Dramatists of the Seventeenth Century

Bentley, Gerald Eades. The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time: 1590-1642. Princeton: Princeton University Press,1971.

Harbage, Alfred. Cavalier Drama. NewYork: Modern Language Association,1936.

Wickham, Glynne. A History of the Theatre. NewYork: Cambrige University Press,1992.

Wynne-Davies and S.P. Cerasano, ed.Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents. NewYork: Routeledge,1997.
 

Elizabeth Cary: The Tragedy of Mariam

*Baker, Howard. "Transformations of Medieval Structure" and "Some Principles of Ethical Form in Pre-Shakespearean Tragic Literature" in Induction to Tragedy.  Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press (1939) 154-220.

A publication of adissertation completed at the University of California and later published by the University of Harvard argiung against Senecan influence in Renaissance tragedy, tracing its origins to instead medieval structure.  Baker takes his authority from  his collaboration with other well-known scholars such as Williard Farnham who has also published books on the subject. Chapters of the book have appeared in journals such as Modern Language Notes and Modern Philology.  Baker skillfully argues that some influences attributed to Seneca, may actually have been the product of evolution from the medieval period.  He sites particularly "medieval" structures as present in early Renaissance tragedy. While Bakers work may seem to argue against Senecan influence, it serves as a foundation to the argument that neo-classicists may have been attracted to the Senecan form because of its familiarity and while not wholly responsible for the "induction of tragedy," Senecan influences refined medieval forms into the Renaissance tragedy.

Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Virginia, presented at the University of Minnesota, 1982, and published as "Senecan Tragedy and the Renaissance" in Illinois Classical Studies, the author defines and historicizes Senecan tragedy and traces its influence through Renaissance tragedy highlighting Senecan imitation in the "contrasting dramatic traditions" of Cornielle and Shakespeare.  Braden pays significant attention to the Senecan nature of the Herod of Corpus Christi plays, as well as explaining the eventual wane of Senecan influence due to poor dramaturgy for the stage and a rising Protestant sentiment agaisnt stoicism.  Braden also makes comparisons between the characters of Herod and Othello. The source provides strong evidence for Cary's Senecan influence as well as some explanation of the progression and digression of Senecan influence in dramatic literature for the stage such as Shakespeare.

Burt argues that accounts of censorship by twentieth-century critics may have been inflated on  old school "Whig" perspective which may have biased the facts.  While Burt recognizes the exisatence of censorhip, he also notes that controversial works were overlooked, citing a lack of authority and the proliferation of vast amounts of material as possible reasons for the apparent leniency.  He notes that censored idividuals, like Jonson, were highly visible members of the literary community and therefore subject to higher standards of censorhip.  Burt also argues that artists of the Renaissance both rebelled and accomodated censorhip citing both Jonson's altacations with  as well as his propgation of censorship.  Burt's thesis might well explain why religiously and politically relevant closet dramas escaped censorship of the court. 

With the support of the American Council of Learned Societies, the University of Pennsylvania and the Folger Institute, Bushnell traces the influence of the tyrannical character through medieval and Renaissance dramas.  She argues that the popularity of the character reflected upon the tyrannical climate of Renaissance England as the population was subject to the tyrannical personalities and vices of their monarchs.  Bushnell's argument explains, in part, social and cultural reasons as to why the character of Herod survived the demise of the Corpus Christi plays and prolifereated in sixteenth century literature.

From the University College Dublin, the critic makes the argument that:"While the term Renaissance was once regarded almost exclusively by cultural historians in terms of an epoch of humanist learning and courtly or aristocratic writing, its boundaries, temporal and ideological, are in the process of being re-mapped by New Historicist, Cultural Materialist, feminist and post-colonial critics."  Clare argues that women's writing in the Renaissance transgressed boundaries placed on their creative and intellectual freedoms.  She puts heavy emphasis on the treatment of Protestant and religious sources and their political, subversive and liberating uses by female authors.  While mentioning Cary's Mariam only briefly, the essay provides rich historical and feminist context.

An early dissertation on The Tragedy of Mariam providing a close structural reading of the text as well as background information and critical arguments relating to character.  Dunstan's close reading of Mariam's speech acts and silence provide insight into possible feminist readings of Cary's tragedy.

Farnham spends two chapters of his book which traces the tragic spirit from the Greco-Roman age to the Elizabethan stage on the subject of the english morality play.  Farnham descriibes the gradual shift of emphasis on spiritual tragedy to more broad humanistic issues as influences by the changing socio-religious climate and growing concern for domestic issues.  This source provides both structural and sociological context as to the morality play's influence on Renaissance Drama.

Cary expert and co-author of the critical  text The Tragedy of Mariam with Barry Weller, Ferguson ponders both a feminist and misogynist reading of the tragedy in relation to their speaking to and against the wifely virtues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Ferguson sites reasons as to why Cary's text and ideology are contradictory. The essay provides essential background in developing Mariam as the herione and arguable the saint and martyr of the drama.

A lecturer in the English department at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of published articles on historical drama, Tudor literary controversy, and Thomas Nashe argues, "If the origins of Greek tragedy are presided over by 'the grotesque shadow of a goat,' the traditions of modern European drama are historically under the shadow of the Christian sacrifice. In what follows I will be exploring the impact of Reformation theology and politics upon two ritual dramas: the Mass and the saint plays."  The impact of Reformation theology may be used to connect saint plays with history plays and to explain the multiple influences in representative works og the seventeenth-centuy.  Griffin also mentions the changing portrayal of female saints in light of feminist tendencies of the day, incorporating both  together cultural and feminist schools of criticism and interpretation.

Essays by various literary critics concerning "Early English Drama and Social Space" including "Theater and Religious Culture" by Paul Whitfield White and "The Theater and Literary Culture" by Barbara A. Mowat and "Early English Drama and Conditions of Performance and Publication" including "Censorship" by Richard Dutton. The essays address antitheatrical criticism, the drama of religious controvesy and the secularization of drama as the efforts of the Protestant crown.

Editors of Text and Commentary editions of the Chester Mystery Cycle published in 1973 and 1983 by the Early English Text Society and the University North Carolina Press publish a modernized text for the general, non-specialist reader.  The edition includes an introduction with sections on the definition of  "mystery cycle," a brief history, the text, staging, modern response and editorial practice, along with suggestions for further reading and criticism.  The edition includes all 24 plays in the cycle with introductions.  For use in comparing characters and selections of text from The Massacre of the Innocents and The Tragedy of Mariam.

"The most comprehensive treatment of its field yet attempted. "  The encyclopedia contains 20,000 entries  dealing with "history, theory, technique, and criticism of poetry from earliest times to the present."  The treatment of history is treated  in terms of languages, movements and schools including world poetry and classifications that "cut-across" linguistic boundaries such as "Renaissance Poetry".  The source is helpful in defining general poetics such as "Medieval Poetics," "Renaissance Poetics," and specific poetics for structural and comparative analysis between historic periods.

Britain's leader in the school of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism and author of books including Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, The Country and the City, Politics and Letters, The Politics of Moderninsm and Resources of Hopetreats the Shakespearean and Jacobin dramatic form and language in relationship to their cultural sources.

Weller, Barry and Margaret Ferguson. The Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry.Los Angeles: Universiy California Press,1994.

The editors, graduates of Yale's Comparative Literature Department, with fellowship support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Giggenheim Memorial Foundation and research support from the University of Utah Research Committee publish editions of Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam, The Fair Queen of Jewry and a biography of the dramatist The Lady Falkland: Her Life, by one of her daughters.  The texts are accompanied with an introduction to supplement textual and interpretive issues concerning the play primarily for professors and students studying women writers of the Renaissance.  The introduction provides short sections on "Subtexts and Contexts for Mariam"  including: "Josephus and Jewish Materials," "Biblical and Historical Herods," "Mystery Play Herods," "Continental Classicizing Dramas About Herod and Mariam," "English 'Closet' Dramas," "The 'Social Text' of Henry VIII's Divorce," and "Shakespeare and Mariam," making it an excellent resource for examing Cary's texts for religious symbolism and context within the framework of the Protestant Reformation and censorship issues concerning religious texts.

Margaret Cavendish: The Religious

Battigelli, Anna. Margaret Cavendish and Exiles of the Mind. University Press Kentucky,1998.

Jagodzinski, Cecile. Privacy and Print. Charlottsville: University Press of Virginia,1999.

Modern: Dorothy Sayers, The Man Born to Be King

Benton, Rita. Carrots May Be Golden. New York: Longmans and Green and Co. New York: 1932.

Benton, Rita. The Bible Play Workshop.  New York: Abingdon Press, 1923.

Berthold, Margot. A History of World Theater. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1972.

Brockett, Oscar G. Century of Innovation: A History of European and American Theatre and Drama Since 1870. New Jeresy: 
Prentice-Hall, 1973.

Ehrensperger, Harold. Religious Drama: Ends and Means. New York: Abingdon Press, 1962.

Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Committee on Religious Drama Religious dramas, 1924- selected by the Committee on Religious Drama of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. New York, London, Century [c1923-

Glaymen, Rose Ebey. Recent Judith Drama and Its Analogues. Philidelphia: University of  Pennsylvania, 1930. 

Hitchman, Janet, 1916-1980 Such a strange lady : a biography of Dorothy L. Sayers / Janet Hitchman New York : Harper & Row, [1975]

Hone, Ralph E. Dorothy Sayers: A Literary Biography. Ohio: Kent State University, 1979.

Kenney, Catherine McGehee. The Remarkable Case of Dorothy Sayers. Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990.

Sayers, Dorothy and Roderick Jellema (selected and introduced by). Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World: A Selection of Essays. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1969.

Sayers, Dorothy L. The Man Born to be King, New York: Harper and  Brothers, 1943.