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The article focuses on analysis of the cause-sign interplay in penitential writing through the lens of modern speech act theory. Topics discussed include differences between Catholic and Protestant penitential understandings, notion of speech as an action has marked penitential theology from its origins and role of cause and sign in doctrinal debate about repentance.

Even when uttered with the best of intentions, an apology pursues contradictory goals: as a confession of guilt it invites condemnation, but as a petition for forgiveness it seeks to soften condemnation. Some philosophers have tried to clean up this illocutionary messiness by defining apology strictly as either moral acknowledgment or as an instrumental means to achieving pardon. Taking revenge tragedy as a literary genre that thematizes the refusal to forgive or forget past offenses, this essay considers three apologies in Shakespeare's Hamlet in order to argue that not only are philosophical efforts to purge ambiguity from apologies likely to fail but they are also ultimately undesirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the relationship of personification and agency, citing John MIlton's "Paradise Lost" as example. It discusses the agency of literal characters in narrative, and explores on personification reflected in the works of Angus Fletcher, Paul de Man, and Gordon Teskey. It mentions the idea of Renaissance commentators on prosopopoeia.

This essay explores a Shakespearean intimation of an alternate model of modern nationhood by looking at the drama "Cymbeline" which was set in ancient Britain. It describes the manner in which the play tackled the paradox of deep roots that modern theories of nationhood describe. The author argues that in the play, Shakespeare registers a transition from conceiving a nation as a community of deep-rooted nati to conceiving it as a community of rather recent origin. The essay also examines Shakespeare's attitude toward nationhood.

This article introduces a series of articles about the interaction between poet Edmund Spenser and John Milton's "A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle."