Recent Publications April 2026: Space, Minds, Shakespeare, and more

'Phantasmal Intersubjectivity: Co-Presence and the Emersivity of Literary Characters', by Marco Bernini

No

'Lines of Flight, Lines of Force: Thomas Pynchon and Star Wars', by Sam Thomas

Yes

'Writing and Weaving the Neo-Victorian Decadence: A. S. Byatt’s Golden Ekphrasis', by Barbara Franchi

No

'What Can AI Do for Special Collections?', by Claire Warwick et al.

Yes

'Addison’s First Letter to Pope', by Claude Willan

Yes

'From Everyman to Hamlet: A Distant Reading', by Vladimir Brljak

Yes

Death, Loss, Memory and Mourning in the Long Nineteenth Century

This 4 volume interdisciplinary collection, co-edited by Mark Sandy and colleagues from the Centre for Death and Life Studies (Durham University) explores loss, memory, and mourning in the long nineteenth century. 

The volumes discuss various themes, such as encountering death; child fatality and loss; memory, mourning, and pets; mourning public figures; duties in common and private contexts; and historical responses to re-organising the dead, cremation, and burial. This collection provides invaluable insight to students and scholars of the History of Emotions.

Dreams, Narrative, and Liminal Cognition

Marco Bernini and Benjamin Alderson-Day edited this volume that presents a novel interdisciplinary framework for investigating dreaming and liminal cognition by bringing together narrative theory, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and the humanities.

The book argues that dreams are liminal cognitive states that challenge conventional boundaries between waking and sleeping, fiction and reality, self-model and world-model, offering a transferable framework for understanding how narrative, cognition and immersion entwine in dream-worlds.

Neo-Victorian Decadence

This pioneering collection of essays, edited by Kostas Boyiopoulos and Joseph Thorne (University of Oxford) connects scholars of Decadence studies and Neo-Victorian studies to investigate the fascinating intersections between these two fields. Showcasing the revivalistic nature of aestheticist and decadent texts, it considers Neo-Victorianism as inherently decadent in how it subverts and reframes Victorian standards.

Within this framework, the book breathes new life into the paradoxical tensions between art and life, nostalgia and the zeitgeist, consumerism and connoisseurship. It interrogates periodisation for the first time, pushing the limits of what might qualify as Neo-Victorian to the Interwar period. The volume stands out for its interdisciplinarity and genre-blending, extending beyond the novel to include non-fiction, film, painting, performance art, and digital communities.

Shakespeare and Ballet: Gender, Sexuality, Race and Politics On Stage

This new and comprehensive study of Shakespearean ballets and their unique interpretive possibilities is the first to foreground the importance of music to the aesthetics and meanings of Shakespeare dance-works.

Organised around adaptations of key plays, each chapter offers close study of the contrasting interpretations and styles of a number of choreographers and illuminates issues of gender, sexuality, race and politics.

David Fuller explores a wide range of Shakespeare’s oeuvre adapted for ballet form, from the 1940s to present. Fuller reads these as forms of creative criticism which reflect wider developments in society and in so doing show Shakespeare as perpetually contemporary.