Reading Shakespeare through a Christian Lens Not only huge English literature fans or apologetics aficionados will be delighted by this special Advent issue of An Unexpected Journal. The aim is to interest the scholar, yes, but also the general reader who has no special knowledge of English literature, Shakespeare, or apologetics. The defense of the Christian faith believes that no domain of human experience. All areas, including the history of ideas political, philosophical, scientific, and social, are fair game for apologetic research and discussion. All that we express in literature (especially the dramatic arts) deals with our experience, and experience is tied to the One who Makes, Redeems, and Sanctifies experience. With features from guest editors: Joe Ricke: "A Guide to Reading this Volume," "Introduction," "Against Pessimism: As You Like It (or Not)" Sarah R.A. Waters: "Lewis, Lear, and The Four Loves" As well as contributions from Shakespearean Scholars: Jem Bloomfield: "Disclosures of Form" John D. Cox: "Paradoxia Shakespeareana" Jack Heller: "Dogberry’s Inscrutable Grace in Much Ado about Nothing" Laura Higgins: "Shakespeare’s Hidden Ghosts" Crystal Hurd: "Ophelia" Corey Latta: "Hamlet’s Father" and "Othello" Tony Lawton and Editors: "Shakespeare and Cultural Apologetics" Tracy Manning and Editors: "An Interview with Tracy Manning" Louis Markos: "Letters From Shakespeare: Love" and "Letters From Shakespeare: Fools" D.S. Martin: "A Poem Emerging From An Epigraph Concerning Hamlet’s Indirection" G. Connor Salter: "Adaptation and Cultural Apologetics" John Stanifer: "Authorship: A Poetic Meditation" Jennifer Woodruff Tait: "Scripture" and "Jaques Tells His Story" Grace Tiffany: “Who is’t can read a woman?” Gary L. Tandy: “O, I have ta’en too little care of this” Including excerpts from the works of William Shakespeare: "Sonnet 55" "Cordelia To Lear" "Isabella’s Speech (On Mercy)" "Bottom’s Dream + Biblical Source" "On Mercy and Prejudice" "Sonnet 116" And commentary from classic authors: "On Shakespeare" by George MacDonald "On MacBeth" by G.K. Chesterton Erasmus On Fools "On Shakespeare" by John Milton 250 pages Volume 5, Issue 4 (Advent 2022)

Rock and Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, and Rock from Dylan to U2 is an edited anthology that seeks to explain just how rock and roll is a Romantic phenomenon that sheds light, retrospectively, on what literary Romanticism was at its different points of origin and on what it has become in the present. This anthology allows Byron and Wollstonecraft to speak back to contemporary theories of Romanticism through Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Relying on Löwy and Sayre’s Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity, it explores how hostility, loss, and longing for unity are particularly appropriate terms for classic rock as well as the origins of these emotions. In essays ranging from Bob Dylan to Blackberry Smoke, this work examines how rock and roll expands, interprets, restates, interrogates, and conflicts with literary Romanticism, all the while understanding that as a term “rock and roll” in reference to popular music from the late 1940s through the early 2000s is every bit as contradictory and difficult to define as the word Romanticism itself.

While many studies on Lewis' literary achievements have been published in the past several years, this book brings much-needed attention to his nonfiction prose, identifying his style and explaining why his writing has remained popular while that of so many of his contemporaries has not.

Lewis's evaluation of the modern world led him to adopt a specific rhetorical stance which runs through and unites his large body of non-fiction prose. Both in his religious and literary pronouncements he projects the image of old Western man; he portrays himself as a representative of older patterns of thought, an embattled survivor in the midst of a century largely hostile to his beliefs and ideas. This posture is evident in his attitudes toward philosophy, politics, society, religion, and literature. From the many statements on language, communication, and style in Lewis's prose, it is apparent that his stance was part of a larger rhetorical theory. Since Lewis believed that all art was essentially communicative, he recommended that writers make conscious choices based almost exclusively on the nature of their audience. Thus, he offered a functional, flexible, and non-prescriptive view of rhetoric. When applied to the area of Christian apologetics, this theory yielded the concept of "translation" -- turning technical, theological language into the vernacular. As a practitioner of rhetoric, Lewis produced a body of non-fiction prose which was essentially argumentative in tone and structure. While favoring rational appeals, particularly inductive arguments by way of analogy, he also manipulated ethos effectively (e.g., the emphasis on his amateur theologian status in religious works) and used emotional appeals sparingly. Structurally, he remained close to classical forms, typically organizing his books and essays in a problem-solution pattern. Lewis's style is the most striking feature of his non-fiction prose. Characterized by a conversational, often humorous, tone, it makes frequent use of informal and colloquial diction and grammar -- even in scholarly works. Although Lewis has been categorized as a writer of the plain style, he often employs elaborate structures and rhetorical figures. His style may best be described as one of certitude. Closely related to his basic attitudes and his intellectual posture, certitude manifests itself in particular dictional and syntactical mannerisms, evident both in his religious writings and in his works of literary criticism.