A leading literary critic, Alan Sinfield's most recent publication is Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (Blackwell, 1989). He is co-editor with Jonathan Dollimore (author of Sexual Dissidence [OUP, 1991]) of the highly influential Political Shakespeare (MUP, 1985).

`Sinfield is always lively and worth reading ... He is a historian yet very much a critic of the present moment, with strong gay and feminist interests, a spirited contempt for unexamined and conventional interpretations. What he says is for the most part controlled by considerable learning and, despite some excesses, by a residual caution ... engagingly lively book.'London Review of Books

• Theatres of war - Caesar and the vandals; cultural materialism, "Othello", and the politics of plausibility; when is a character not a character? Desdemona, Olivia, Lady MacBeth, and subjectivity; power and ideology - an outline theory and Sidney's "Arcadia"; "Macbeth" - history, ideology and intellectuals; history and ideology, masculinity and miscegenation - the instance of "Henry V"; protestantism - questions of subjectivity and control; Sidney's "Defence" and the collective-farm chairman - puritan humanism and the cultural apparatus; tragedy, God and writing - Hamlet, Faustus, Tamburlaine; cultural imperialism and the primal scene of US man - Daniel Boone country.

A leading literary critic, Alan Sinfield's most recent publication is Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (Blackwell, 1989). He is co-editor with Jonathan Dollimore (author of Sexual Dissidence [OUP, 1991]) of the highly influential Political Shakespeare (MUP, 1985).

`Sinfield is always lively and worth reading ... He is a historian yet very much a critic of the present moment, with strong gay and feminist interests, a spirited contempt for unexamined and conventional interpretations. What he says is for the most part controlled by considerable learning and, despite some excesses, by a residual caution ... engagingly lively book.'London Review of Books

• Theatres of war - Caesar and the vandals; cultural materialism, "Othello", and the politics of plausibility; when is a character not a character? Desdemona, Olivia, Lady MacBeth, and subjectivity; power and ideology - an outline theory and Sidney's "Arcadia"; "Macbeth" - history, ideology and intellectuals; history and ideology, masculinity and miscegenation - the instance of "Henry V"; protestantism - questions of subjectivity and control; Sidney's "Defence" and the collective-farm chairman - puritan humanism and the cultural apparatus; tragedy, God and writing - Hamlet, Faustus, Tamburlaine; cultural imperialism and the primal scene of US man - Daniel Boone country.

A leading literary critic, Alan Sinfield's most recent publication is Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (Blackwell, 1989). He is co-editor with Jonathan Dollimore (author of Sexual Dissidence [OUP, 1991]) of the highly influential Political Shakespeare (MUP, 1985).

`Sinfield is always lively and worth reading ... He is a historian yet very much a critic of the present moment, with strong gay and feminist interests, a spirited contempt for unexamined and conventional interpretations. What he says is for the most part controlled by considerable learning and, despite some excesses, by a residual caution ... engagingly lively book.'London Review of Books

• Theatres of war - Caesar and the vandals; cultural materialism, "Othello", and the politics of plausibility; when is a character not a character? Desdemona, Olivia, Lady MacBeth, and subjectivity; power and ideology - an outline theory and Sidney's "Arcadia"; "Macbeth" - history, ideology and intellectuals; history and ideology, masculinity and miscegenation - the instance of "Henry V"; protestantism - questions of subjectivity and control; Sidney's "Defence" and the collective-farm chairman - puritan humanism and the cultural apparatus; tragedy, God and writing - Hamlet, Faustus, Tamburlaine; cultural imperialism and the primal scene of US man - Daniel Boone country.