"The essays range from Shakespeare and early modern literature to Wordsworth. They evince scrupulous care over the handling of evidence, an interdisciplinary impulse yoked always to a prizing of the literary (particularly the poetic), a willingness to embrace an ambitious argument where it can be supported, a humaneness of temper, particularly in polemic. Latent within them all is a wrestling with the central problem of text and context."--BOOK JACKET.