The inverted line

This chapter uses the cuckold, the man whose wife is unfaithful, to explore connections between gender and the important theme of inversion in early modern popular culture. The cuc...

This chapter deals with the theme of hypocrisy — the inverted relationship between decision and action. Hypocrisy is a response to a world in which values, ideas, or people are in ...

Mahler’s orchestral song ‘Das himmlische Leben’ (1892) includes references to the chanson of Aristaeus from Act I of Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers (1858)—an opéra bouffon Mahler co...

This chapter treats the second-generation Hasmonean figure John Hyrcanus to whom the virtues of leadership, priesthood, and prophecy are attributed. This ascription is reflected no...

This chapter discusses whiteness, masculine desire, and the animating absent black presence now inverted since its inception in minstrelsy. It shows how the triumph of hardcore rap...