Shakespearean Subversions

Shakespearean Subversions PDF Author: Richard Hillman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This book traces manifestations of trickery and subversion across the Shakespearean canon in such a way as to bring together several diverse strands of critical thought. By isolating a principle of subversiveness that cuts across the standard categories, Richard Hillman shows a relation amongst otherwise disparate aspects of the plays and delineates broad patterns of development. In Shakespearean Subversions discussion of such obviously subversive character-types as the Clown, the Fool and the Machiavellian villain is incorporated into a broader concern with disruptive energy, not as a thematic motif, but as a generative influence on textual production. Hillman suggests that this influence may be exercised, paradoxically, through the counter-claims of social order. The book situates this central idea in relation to a number of theoretical positions, including New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, and Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque. The primary conceptual anchor is supplied by recent anthropological interpretations of the folklore figure known as the Trickster. The subsequent plan of the book is wide-ranging: there is discussion of almost every play, with some unusual associations across boundaries of genre and a number of radically unconventional specific interpretations. Shakespearean Subversions will appeal to specialists and to any reader with a serious interest in Shakespearean drama.

Shakespearean Subversions

Shakespearean Subversions PDF Author: Richard Hillman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book traces manifestations of trickery and subversion across the Shakespearean canon in such a way as to bring together several diverse strands of critical thought. By isolating a principle of subversiveness that cuts across the standard categories, Richard Hillman shows a relation amongst otherwise disparate aspects of the plays and delineates broad patterns of development. In Shakespearean Subversions discussion of such obviously subversive character-types as the Clown, the Fool and the Machiavellian villain is incorporated into a broader concern with disruptive energy, not as a thematic motif, but as a generative influence on textual production. Hillman suggests that this influence may be exercised, paradoxically, through the counter-claims of social order. The book situates this central idea in relation to a number of theoretical positions, including New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, and Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque. The primary conceptual anchor is supplied by recent anthropological interpretations of the folklore figure known as the Trickster. The subsequent plan of the book is wide-ranging: there is discussion of almost every play, with some unusual associations across boundaries of genre and a number of radically unconventional specific interpretations. Shakespearean Subversions will appeal to specialists and to any reader with a serious interest in Shakespearean drama.

Shakespeare's Problem Plays

Shakespeare's Problem Plays PDF Author: Simon Barker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137208902
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This New Casebook offers a wide-ranging selection of contemporary critical readings of Shakespeare's three 'problem plays': All's Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Trolius and Cressida. Together, they reflect the diversity of late twentieth-century theory and the controversy that continues to be generated by the plays, and discuss a variety of key issues. These include the meaning of the term 'problem play', the historical context and political and cultural significance of the plays, as well as issues of staging and theatre history. The volume also provides a helpful introduction which guides the reader through the critical approaches, terms and debates, as well as explanatory notes for each essay and a useful section on further reading.

The Shakespearean comic and tragicomic

The Shakespearean comic and tragicomic PDF Author: Richard Hillman
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526144093
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
In exploring links between the early modern English theatre and France, Richard Hillman focuses on Shakespeare’s deployment of genres whose dominant Italian models and affinities might seem to leave little scope for French ones. The author draws on specific and unsuspected points of contact, whilst also pointing out a broad tendency by the dramatist, to draw on French material, both dramatic and non-dramatic, to inflect comic forms in potentially tragic directions. The resulting internal tensions are evident from the earliest comedies to the latest tragicomedies (or ‘romances’). While its many original readings will interest specialists and students of Shakespeare, this book will have broader appeal: it contributes significantly, from an unfamiliar angle, to the contemporary discourse concerned with early modern English culture within the European context. At the same time, it is accessible to a wide range of readers, with translations provided for all non-English citations.

Shakespeare’s Politic Histories

Shakespeare’s Politic Histories PDF Author: John H. Cameron
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003809022
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This book argues that Shakespeare's first tetralogy is informed by the Italian ‘politic histories’ of the early modern period, those works of history, inspired by the Roman historian Tacitus, that sought to explore the machinations of power politics in governance and in the shaping of historical events; that a close reading of these Italian ‘politic histories’ will greatly aid our understanding of the ‘politic’ qualities dramatized in Shakespeare’s early English History plays; that the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli in particular will likewise aid to such understanding; that these ‘politic histories’ were available (in a variety of forms) to many English early modern writers, Shakespeare included, and are thus helpful as grounds for political and strategic analogy and for informing our reading of Shakespeare's politic histories. While a reading of the Italian ‘politic’ historians can aid in our understanding of Shakespeare’s achievement, we should regard the English History plays as ‘politic histories’ in their own right, i.e. as dramatized versions of precisely the same kinds of ‘politic’ historical writing, with its emphasis on ragion di Stato or raison d’état. This emphasis on what the Elizabethans called ‘stratagems’ suggests new ways to read the plays and to interpret the motivation and action of its characters, ways that challenge some of our more established reading of the plays’ ‘Machiavellian’ characters (particularly Richard III) and suggest far greater strategic acumen on the part of previously overlooked characters (particularly Buckingham and Stanley), providing new ways to read the Shakespeare's politic histories and to better appreciate their Italian connection.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare PDF Author: Park Honan
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191590991
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
Park Honan uses a wealth of fresh information to dramatically alter our perceptions of Shakespeare the actor, poet, and playwright. The young poet's relationships, his early courtship of Anne Hathaway, their marriage, his attitudes to women such as Jennet Davenant, Marie Mountjoy, and his own daughters, are seen in a new light, illuminating Shakespeare's needs, habits, passions and concerns. Shakespeare: A Life casts new light on the complexity and fascination of Shakespeare's life and his extraordinary development as an artist.

Shakespeare Studies

Shakespeare Studies PDF Author: Leeds Barroll
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838637821
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
This volume includes the Forum Race and the Study of Shakespeare and a related essay, 'Hottentot': The Emergence of an Early Modern Racist Epithet. Other articles discuss the works of Robert Weimann, recent studies in early modern sexuality and concepts of virginity.

England in the Age of Shakespeare

England in the Age of Shakespeare PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025304233X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
How did it feel to hear Macbeth's witches chant of "double, double toil and trouble" at a time when magic and witchcraft were as real as anything science had to offer? How were justice and forgiveness understood by the audience who first watched King Lear; how were love and romance viewed by those who first saw Romeo and Juliet? In England in the Age of Shakespeare, Jeremy Black takes readers on a tour of life in the streets, homes, farms, churches, and palaces of the Bard's era. Panning from play to audience and back again, Black shows how Shakespeare's plays would have been experienced and interpreted by those who paid to see them. From the dangers of travel to the indignities of everyday life in teeming London, Black explores the jokes, political and economic references, and small asides that Shakespeare's audiences would have recognized. These moments of recognition often reflected the audience's own experiences of what it was to, as Hamlet says, "grunt and sweat under a weary life." Black's clear and sweeping approach seeks to reclaim Shakespeare from the ivory tower and make the plays' histories more accessible to the public for whom the plays were always intended.

Shakespeare, Cinema, Counter-Culture

Shakespeare, Cinema, Counter-Culture PDF Author: Ailsa Grant Ferguson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135041849
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Addressing for the first time Shakespeare’s place in counter-cultural cinema, this book examines and theorizes counter-hegemonic, postmodern, and post-punk Shakespeare in late 20th and early 21st century film. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies, Grant Ferguson presents an interdisciplinary approach that offers new theories on the nature and application of Shakespearean appropriations in the light of postmodern modes of representation. The book considers the nature of the Shakespearean inter-text in subcultural political contexts concerning the politicized aesthetics of a Shakespearean ‘body in pieces,’ the carnivalesque, and notions of Shakespeare as counter-hegemonic weapon or source of empowerment. Representative films use Shakespeare (and his accompanying cultural capital) to challenge notions of capitalist globalization, dominant socio-cultural ideologies, and hegemonic modes of expression. In response to a post-modern culture saturated with logos and semiotic abbreviations, many such films play with the emblematic imagery and references of Shakespeare’s texts. These curious appropriations have much to reveal about the elusive nature of intertextuality in late postmodern culture and the battle for cultural ownership of Shakespeare. As there has yet to be a study that isolates and theorizes modes of Shakespearean production that specifically demonstrate resistance to the social, political, ideological, aesthetic, and cinematic norms of the Western world, this book expands the dialogue around such texts and interprets their patterns of appropriation, adaptation, and representation of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance

Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance PDF Author: Michele Marrapodi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317056434
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance investigates the works of Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists from within the context of the European Renaissance and, more specifically, from within the context of Italian cultural, dramatic, and literary traditions, with reference to the impact and influence of classical, coeval, and contemporary culture. In contrast to previous studies, the critical perspectives pursued in this volume’s tripartite organization take into account a wider European intertextual dimension and, above all, an ideological interpretation of the 'aesthetics' or 'politics' of intertextuality. Contributors perceive the presence of the Italian world in early modern England not as a traditional treasure trove of influence and imitation, but as a potential cultural force, consonant with complex processes of appropriation, transformation, and ideological opposition through a continuous dialectical interchange of compliance and subversion.

Shakespearean Negotiations

Shakespearean Negotiations PDF Author: Stephen Greenblatt
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520061606
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Stephen Greenblatt has been at the center of a major shift in literary interpretation toward a critical method that situates cultural creation in history. Shakespearean Negotiations is a sustained and powerful exemplification of this innovative method, offering a new way of understanding the power of Shakespeare's achievement and, beyond this, an original analysis of cultural process.