Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays

Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays PDF Author: Joseph Rosenblum
Publisher: Salem Press
ISBN: 9781619258648
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Examines all 39 of the most influential plays by Shakespeare, with an in-depth examination of each play's historical significance, literary technique, and contemporary alignment. The plays of William Shakespeare, from tragedies such as Hamlet to comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, have endured since their first productions in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. A vital part of high school and college literature curricula today, these plays continue to educate and entertain, showing students - as well as the general populace - themes of humanity that have persevered throughout the ages, such as romantic love, greed, power, revenge, forgiveness, and many more. Written by leading experts in the field of Shakespearean studies, Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays closely examines all 39 of Shakespeare's plays, as well as Shakespeare's life, style, technique, and influences. This title begins with a biography of Shakespeare and an introduction to his plays as a whole, followed by close readings of individual plays. Each essay is devoted to a single work and provides an in-depth critical analysis of the play's historical significance, literary/dramatic techniques, and meaning to a contemporary audience. An abstract, explanation of context, and lists of keywords, works cited, and recommended books for further study also enhance each essay. The second half of the book focuses on various critical readings, analyzing Shakespeare's form, technique, and syntax, as well as main themes, motifs, and related topics. Also included are other resources useful to studying Shakespeare's plays, including a guide to free online sources and more literary criticism, a bibliography, a list of contributors, and a complete index. The essays in this single volume compile the essentials for any person interested in Shakespeare, whether a student approaching his works for the first time or a habitual theatergoer about to witness a new production of one of the plays. This title is a set of essays that record the history of Shakespeare the man, the dramatist, and the poet, and analyze each work attributed to his pen. With so much comprehensive analysis of Shakespeare's life and works, Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays is a must-have resource for high school and undergraduate literature departments, as well as public libraries who wish to support their literature collections.

Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays

Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays PDF Author: Joseph Rosenblum
Publisher: Salem Press
ISBN: 9781619258648
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines all 39 of the most influential plays by Shakespeare, with an in-depth examination of each play's historical significance, literary technique, and contemporary alignment. The plays of William Shakespeare, from tragedies such as Hamlet to comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, have endured since their first productions in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. A vital part of high school and college literature curricula today, these plays continue to educate and entertain, showing students - as well as the general populace - themes of humanity that have persevered throughout the ages, such as romantic love, greed, power, revenge, forgiveness, and many more. Written by leading experts in the field of Shakespearean studies, Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays closely examines all 39 of Shakespeare's plays, as well as Shakespeare's life, style, technique, and influences. This title begins with a biography of Shakespeare and an introduction to his plays as a whole, followed by close readings of individual plays. Each essay is devoted to a single work and provides an in-depth critical analysis of the play's historical significance, literary/dramatic techniques, and meaning to a contemporary audience. An abstract, explanation of context, and lists of keywords, works cited, and recommended books for further study also enhance each essay. The second half of the book focuses on various critical readings, analyzing Shakespeare's form, technique, and syntax, as well as main themes, motifs, and related topics. Also included are other resources useful to studying Shakespeare's plays, including a guide to free online sources and more literary criticism, a bibliography, a list of contributors, and a complete index. The essays in this single volume compile the essentials for any person interested in Shakespeare, whether a student approaching his works for the first time or a habitual theatergoer about to witness a new production of one of the plays. This title is a set of essays that record the history of Shakespeare the man, the dramatist, and the poet, and analyze each work attributed to his pen. With so much comprehensive analysis of Shakespeare's life and works, Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays is a must-have resource for high school and undergraduate literature departments, as well as public libraries who wish to support their literature collections.

Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Sonnets

Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Sonnets PDF Author: Salem Press
Publisher: Salem Press
ISBN: 9781619254992
Category : Sonnets, English
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Sonnets offers a collection of new essays on the Sonnets written by William Shakespeare, the most famous English playwright of all time. A basic part of the literature curriculum, Shakespeare's works-still being introduced to students, from high school through college, four centuries after their composition-have never lost their popularity.

The Shakespeare Claimants

The Shakespeare Claimants PDF Author: H. N Gibson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136561811
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This edition first published in 1962. The Shakespeare Claimants is a critical survey of the great controversy that has raged over the authorship of the Shakespearean plays. It provides the general reader with an outline history of this controversy and with a full description and analysis of the main anti-Stratfordian arguments. This book concentrates on the four main claimants: Bacon, Oxford, Derby and Marlowe. The book contains an extensive bibliography and footnotes to guide the reader through the text.

Richard II

Richard II PDF Author: Jeremy Lopez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136479767
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Arguably the first play in a Shakespearean tetralogy, Richard II is a unique and compelling political drama whose themes still resonate today. It is one of the few Shakespeare plays written entirely in verse and its format presents unique theatrical challenges. Politically engaged and controversial, it raises crucial debates about the relationship between early modern art, audience response and state power. This collection provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the critical and theatrical history of the play. The substantial introduction surveys the history of critical interpretations of Richard II since the eighteenth century. The eleven newly written critical essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field then adopt an eclectic range of critical approaches that encourage scholars and students to pursue new and imaginative directions with the text.

Hamlet

Hamlet PDF Author: Robert C. Evans
Publisher: Critical Insights
ISBN: 9781642650266
Category : Princes in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Hamlet may be the most influential play ever written. It is certainly one of the most famous and important. This volume offers diverse views of the work that many consider William Shakespeare's masterpiece. Essays provide close analyses of language, discussion of the play as a work (and film), and various contextual approaches, including essays on historical, cultural, social, philosophical, and gender contexts.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream PDF Author: Dorothea Kehler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135886679
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
This volume traces the modern critical and performance history of this play, one of Shakespeare's most-loved and most-performed comedies. The essay focus on such modern concerns as feminism, deconstruction, textual theory, and queer theory.

Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare

Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare PDF Author: Franziska Quabeck
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110301113
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The concept of the just war poses one of the most important ethical questions to date. Can war ever be justified and, if so, how? When is a cause of war proportional to its costs and who must be held responsible? The monograph Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare demonstrates that the necessary moral evaluation of these questions is not restricted to the philosophical moral and political discourse. This analysis of Shakespeare's plays, which focuses on the histories, tragedies and Roman plays in chronological order, brings to light that the drama includes an elaborate and complex debate of the ethical issues of warfare. The plays that feature in this analysis range from Henry VI to Coriolanus and they are analysed according to the three Aquinian principles of legitimate authority, just cause and right intention. Also extending the principles of analysis to more modern notions of responsibility, proportionality and the jus in bello-presupposition, this monograph shows that just war theory constitutes a dominant theoretical approach to war in the Shakespearean canon.

Impressive Shakespeare

Impressive Shakespeare PDF Author: Harry Newman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317118324
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Impressive Shakespeare reassesses Shakespeare’s relationship with "print culture" in light of his plays’ engagement with the language and material culture of three interrelated "impressing technologies": wax sealing, coining, and typographic printing. It analyses the material and rhetorical forms through which drama was thought to "imprint" early modern audiences and readers with ideas, morals and memories, and—looking to our own cultural moment—shows how Shakespeare has been historically constructed as an "impressive" dramatist. Through material readings of four plays—Coriolanus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale—Harry Newman argues that Shakespeare deploys the imprint as a self-reflexive trope in order to advertise the value of his plays to audiences and readers, and that in turn the language of impression has shaped, and continues to shape, Shakespeare’s critical afterlife. The book pushes the boundaries of what we understand by "print culture", and challenges assumptions about the emergence of concepts now central to Shakespeare’s perceived canonical value, such as penetrating characterisation, poetic transformation, and literary fatherhood. Harry Newman’s suggestive analysis of techniques and tropes of sealing, coining and printing produces a revelatory account of Shakespearean creative poetics. It’s sustainedly startling in its rereading of familiar lines - but the chapter I found most original is on Measure for Measure: Newman is the first critic to attempt to interpret the play’s authorial status as part of its own thematic and linguistic interrogation of illegitimacy and counterfeiting. He makes authorship matter in a literary and creative, rather than a quantitative and statistical, sense. Impressive Shakespeare is a brilliant scholarly debut. - Emma Smith Editor, Shakespeare Survey Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Hertford College, Oxford

Shakespeare and the Second World War

Shakespeare and the Second World War PDF Author: Irena Makaryk
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442698381
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Shakespeare’s works occupy a prismatic and complex position in world culture: they straddle both the high and the low, the national and the foreign, literature and theatre. The Second World War presents a fascinating case study of this phenomenon: most, if not all, of its combatants have laid claim to Shakespeare and have called upon his work to convey their society’s self-image. In wartime, such claims frequently brought to the fore a crisis of cultural identity and of competing ownership of this ‘universal’ author. Despite this, the role of Shakespeare during the Second World War has not yet been examined or documented in any depth. Shakespeare and the Second World War provides the first sustained international, collaborative incursion into this terrain. The essays demonstrate how the wide variety of ways in which Shakespeare has been recycled, reviewed, and reinterpreted from 1939–1945 are both illuminated by and continue to illuminate the War today.

Shakespeare and the Book

Shakespeare and the Book PDF Author: David Scott Kastan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521786515
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
An account of Shakespeare's plays as they were transformed from scripts into books.