This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.

Eschatology is the study of the last things: death, judgment, the afterlife, and the end of the world. Through centuries of Christian thoughtfrom the early Church fathers through the Middle Ages and the Reformationthese issues were of the utmost importance. In other religions, too, eschatological concerns were central. After the Enlightenment, though, many religious thinkers began to downplay the importance of eschatology which, in light of rationalism, came to be seen as something of an embarrassment. The twentieth century, however, saw the rise of phenomena that placed eschatology back at the forefront of religious thought. From the rapid expansion of fundamentalist forms of Christianity, with their focus on the end times; to the proliferation of apocalyptic new religious movements; to the recent (and very public) debates about suicide, martyrdom, and paradise in Islam, interest in eschatology is once again on the rise. In addition to its popular resurgence, in recent years some of the worlds most important theologians have returned eschatology to its former position of prominence. The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology will provide an important critical survey of this diverse body of thought and practice from a variety of perspectives: biblical, historical, theological, philosophical, and cultural. This volume will be the primary resource for students, scholars, and others interested in questions of our ultimate existence.

The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas provides a comprehensive survey of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant philosophical and theological reception of Thomas Aquinas over the past 750 years.This Handbook will serve as a necessary primer for everyone who wishes to study Aquinas's thought and/or the history of theology and philosophy since Aquinas's day. Part I considers the late-medieval receptions of Aquinas among Catholics and Orthodox. Part II examines sixteenth-century Western receptions of Aquinas (Protestant and Catholic), followed by a chapter on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Orthodox reception. Part III discusses seventeenth-century Protestant and Catholic receptions, and Part IV surveys eighteenth- and nineteenth-century receptions (Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic). Part V focuses on the twentieth century and takes into account the diversity of theological movements in the past century as well as extensive philosophical treatment. The final section unpicks contemporary systematic approaches to Aquinas, covering the main philosophical and theological themes for which he is best known. With chapters written by a wide range of experts in their respective fields, this volume provides a valuable touchstone regarding the developments that have marked the past seven centuries of Christian theology.

What IS opera? Contributors to The Oxford Handbook of Opera respond to this deceptively simple question with a rich and compelling exploration of opera's adaption to changing artistic and political currents. Fifty of the world's most respected scholars cast opera as a fluid entity that continuously reinvents itself in a reflection of its patrons, audience, and creators. The synergy of power, performance, and identity recurs thematically throughout the volume's major topics: Words, Music, and Meaning; Performance and Production; Opera and Society; and Transmission and Reception. Individual essays engage with repertoire from Monteverdi, Mozart, and Meyerbeer to Strauss, Henze, and Adams in studies of composition, national identity, transmission, reception, sources, media, iconography, humanism, the art of collecting, theory, analysis, commerce, singers, directors, criticism, editions, politics, staging, race, and gender. The title of the penultimate section, Opera on the Edge, suggests the uncertainty of opera's future: is opera headed toward catastrophe or have social and musical developments of the last hundred years stimulated something new and exciting, and, well, operatic? In an epilogue to the volume, a contemporary opera composer speaks candidly about opera composition today. The Oxford Handbook of Opera is an essential companion to scholars, educators, advanced students, performers, and knowledgeable listeners: those who simply love opera.

The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500-1640 is the only current overview of early modern English prose writing. The aim of the volume is to make prose more visible as a subject and as a mode of writing. It covers a vast range of material vital for the understanding of the period: from jestbooks, newsbooks, and popular romance to the translation of the classics and the pioneering collections of scientific writing and travel writing; from diaries, tracts on witchcraft, and domestic conduct books to rhetorical treatises designed for a courtly audience; from little known works such as William Baldwin's Beware the Cat, probably the first novel in English, to The Bible, The Book of Common Prayer and Richard Hooker's eloquent statement of Anglican belief, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. The work not only deals with the range and variety of the substance and types of English prose, but also analyses the forms and styles of writing adopted in the early modern period, ranging from the Euphuistic nature of prose fiction inaugurated by John Lyly's mannered novel, to the aggressive polemic of the Marprelate controversy; from the scatological humour of comic writing to the careful modulations of the most significant sermons of the age; and from the pithy and concise English essays of Francis Bacon to the ornate and meandering style of John Florio's translation of Montaigne's famous collection. Each essay provides an overview as well as comment on key passages, and a select guide to further reading.

Starting from differences between reenactment and the more established practice of historical reconstruction, leading practitioners and theorists ask how the notion of preservation and representation associated with reconstruction is transformed by reenactment into historical experience and affective relation to the past in the present. In other terms: How does dance convey historical meaning through sensuous form? Danced reenactment poses the problem of history and historicity in relation to the troubled temporality inherent to dance itself. Ephemerality as the central trope of dance is hence displaced in favor of dance as a reiterative practice that confounds categories of chronological time and opens up a theoretical space of history that is often invisibilized by ideologies of immediacy traditionally attributed to dancing.

The Caribbean is a microcosm of the world. In this very small geographic space one encounters global religions as well as religious practices that are indigenous to the region. This volume provides an overview of Caribbean religions, one that respects the diversity of the religious traditions and the national particularity of the region. It addresses the prominent religious traditions in the Caribbean, with a focus on multiple geographic settings, and examines a cross-section of themes that impact the region broadly and the academic study of Caribbean religion.