The history of French literature features endless arguments about melange des genres: whether two different genres can be mixed successfully. If the new movie The Mexican had been available to the anti-mixers, what hay they could have made with it! The film, an...

SHOULD YOU ever decide to apply for a rail franchise, this is how it works. You look at the services that the Government requires you to run; consider the rolling stock available to you; and offer a deal that enables you to make a...

In this essay, Schwyzer surveys the circumstances surrounding the composition and the publication history of The Unfortunate Traveller and Christs Tears over Jerusalem to explain how the two works could be the product of the same time in Nashe's career. The critic characterizes Nashe as an innovator whose deep belief in orthodoxy and the status quo gave him the freedom to experiment without fear of upsetting the order he believed was firmly entrenched.

In the following excerpt from his study of the development of the English novel, Jusserand offers an introduction to Nashe's life and his major prose work, The Unfortunate Traveller, arguing that it is an early example of the picaresque in English.

In this essay, Mentz discusses Nashe's use of generic models in The Unfortunate Traveller, particularly his adaptation of the romance. The critic suggests that Nashe pressed on the tensions within the romance genre, not so much for satirical effect but as a means of expanding the genre and exploring its potential.