Forward

Welcome to Issue 2 of Links & Letters devoted to Literature and Culture. If you have aiready read Issue 1 you will know that Links &Letters is determined to make al1 areas of English Studies accesible to everybody regardless of hislher particular speciality, linguistics or literature. In this issue we have dealt with different areas in the field of literature and culture. We start with three articles on literary topics in the strictest sense of the word. The first article shows how Shakespeare's plays can come aiive in the classroom. The second one gives us a practicai use of Reader Response Criticism in the literature classroom and the third article presents a feminist reading of one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays, Henry VI. We then offer two more culturally oriented articles. First, an analysis of how Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women gave rise to two different understandings of feminism and second, a study of Waiter Scott's Ivanhoe as a text about national unity. This issue also includes an interview, A Tdlk Witb David Dabydeen, who is weil known both as a literary critic and a writer. Dabydeen, a qualified spokesman on postcolonial literature, discusses the role of black writers as well as his two recently published novels, which describe the migrant experience in Britain and the changing concept of Britishness. In the section Notes and News you will find information about the research being done on literature and culture in the English Department of the UAB, including publications, forthcoming events, and issues 3 and 4. We hope that this issue fulfills our main objective: to link together everybody involved in English Studies, teachers and students, specialists in linguistics and s~ecialists in literature, and to ~rovide them with, above dl, clear ideas about the topics presented. Felicity Hand Josep M. Jaumi Coordinators