Iconic authors
Themes
Bibliography of the day
Disgust with One's Lot, Why Moralists Feared the Fairy Lover
For generations, moralists warned that romances and fairy tales would ruin young women. Read closely, their fear was not of vice but of discontent: stories of enchanted lovers taught readers to want a life their station had not granted them.
The Colour of the Moor and the Contest over a Universal Shakespeare
Critics hailed Shakespeare as the poet of all humanity, then explained that Othello could not be truly black and that his marriage proved a natural aversion. Black writers and actors answered by claiming the whole inheritance.
