Books by Lisa Hopkins

This book examines the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century engagement with a crucial part of Britain's past, the period between the withdrawal of the Roman legions and the Norman Conquest. A number of early modern plays suggest an underlying continuity, an essential English identity linked to the land and impervious to change. This book considers the extent to which ideas about early modern English and British national, religious, and political identities were rooted in cultural constructions of the pre-Conquest past.

Exploring how the Gothic has been deployed in contemporary films.

Concerning itself with the complex interplay between iconoclasm against images of the Virgin Mary in post-Reformation England and stage representations that evoke various 'Marian moments' from the medieval, Catholic past, this collection answers the call for further investigation the complex relationship between the fraught religio-political culture of the period and the theater that it spawned. Contributors analyze the vestiges of Catholic tradition and culture that leak out in stage imagery, plot devices, and characterization.

It ranges widely over a variety of authors including classic golden age crime writers such as the four 'queens of crime' (Allingham, Christie, Marsh, Sayers), Nicholas Blake and Edmund Crispin, as well as more recent authors such as Reginald Hill, Kate Atkinson and Val McDermid.

Explores the way in which the stories of the Caesars, and of the Julio-Claudians in particular, can be used to figure the stories of English rulers on the Renaissance stage. This title demonstrates how early modern English dramatists, using Roman modes of literary representation as cover, commented on the issues of the day.

The succession to the throne was a burning topic not only in the final years of Elizabeth but well into the 1630s. This title analyzes some of the ways in which the dramatic works of the time - by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster and Ford among others - reflect, negotiate and dream the issue of the succession to the throne.

Offers an investigation of the complex relationship between the fraught religio-political culture of the modern and the theater that it spawned. This title addresses questions such as: What is the cultural function of dramatic Marian moments? and, Are Marian moments nostalgic for, or critical of, the 'Old Faith'?

Considering a variety of questions centering on magic and, or in, performance, this volume furthers the debate about the cultural work performed by representations of magic on the early modern English stage. Collectively the essays show that the idea of transformation applies not only to the objects and subjects of magic.

The first scholarly edition of a little-known play by a major Renaissance playwright, which interestingly reworks Othello. -- .

Lisa Hopkins analyzes eight film adaptations which have taken either Shakespeare or Jane Austen - icons of Englishness - out of their original geographical or cultural context and transposed them to a new location, allowing for a powerful interrogation both of what these texts mean in the modern world, and of Englishness itself.

This book offers a lively introduction to all of the plays of Christopher Marlowe and to the central concerns of his age, many of which are still important to us--religious uncertainty, the clash between Islam and Christianity, ideas of sexuality, and the role of the marginalised inidividual in society.Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of Marlowe's work and its cultural contexts: Marlowe's life and death; the Marlowe canon; the theatrical contexts and stage history of the plays; Marlowe's interest in old and new branches of knowledge; the ways in which he transgresses against established norms and values; and the major issues which have been raised in critical discussions of his plays.

Introduces students to the study of Shakespeare and grounds their understandings of his work in theoretical discourses. By addressing what is primarily at stake in the major theoretical approaches to Shakespeare's works, the book breaks down both fears and preconceptions to offer students a map of the current critical practices of others. -- .