Author:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408172372
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
This landmark collection of newly-commissioned essays by leading international scholars, offers expert close readings of Shakespeare and other early modern authors. The book is an intervention into current critical methodology as well as an invaluable tool for all students of the literature of the period, exemplifying the possibilities of close reading in the hands of a range of gifted practitioners. Chapters cover a range of key texts from Shakespeare and other major writers of the period such as Milton, Donne, Jonson and Sidney. This is a unique collection as no other book offers such a rich variety of self-contained, short-form close readings. As such it can be used in the undergraduate classroom as well as by scholars and post-graduates and will also appeal to literary readers with an enthusiasm for Shakespeare. Contributors include leading Shakespeareans Stanley Wells, Stanley Fish, Coppelia Kahn and Lukas Erne.
Author: Jeremy Lopez
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472581032
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
Shakespeare's plays are works of art made out of words. To read the plays closely, that is, to pay careful attention to the multiple, shifting meanings of and relationships between their words, is to gain a deep and lasting appreciation for the complex artistry of their construction and of their effects. In fourteen chapters, the book takes readers on a guided tour through some of the most productive sites in Shakespeare's plays for analysis, providing an introduction to the practice of reading Shakespeare's plays closely, and some examples of the interpretive work that such close reading can enable. Topics of analysis include verbal patterning, dramatic structure, staging and stage directions, soliloquies and character-construction and poetic meter. This is an ideal teaching text for introductory courses on Shakespeare. Offering a wide range of examples from nearly all of Shakespeare's plays, it will give students the analytical tools they need to develop sustained close readings of their own.
Author: Stephen Booth
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 161147891X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
Dealing mainly with the works of William Shakespeare, the essays in Close Readings without Readings reflect Stephen Booth’s lifelong interest in uncovering the ways great literature works upon readers. As the book’s title suggests, the author does not aim to create new or novel interpretations or to uncover the political agendas of literary works, but to notice language patterns—repetitions, analogies, correspondences, echoes, overtones—and other ways in which the choice and the arrangement of words affect readers. For Booth, close reading is a practice of attentiveness. He notices how, why, and in what ways Shakespeare’s works affect his readers. Whether readers agree with the premises of a literary work or not, they subject themselves, knowingly or not, to its effects. For Booth, what we value in literature is the experience. He has devoted his own work to recognizing the nature, process, and functions of reading literature, and to teaching others to do the same. Recent years have seen Booth’s efforts recognized by volumes dedicated both to close reading and to his achievements as editor, scholar, critic, and teacher.
Author: Emma Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191069280
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
This is a biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people have interacted with this iconic book over the four hundred years of its history. Throughout the stress is on what we can learn from individual copies now spread around the world about their eventful lives. From ink blots to pet paws, from annotations to wineglass rings, First Folios teem with evidence of their place in different contexts with different priorities. This study offers new ways to understand Shakespeare's reception and the history of the book. Unlike previous scholarly investigations of the First Folio, it is not concerned with the discussions of how the book came into being, the provenance of its texts, or the technicalities of its production. Instead, it reanimates, in narrative style, the histories of this book, paying close attention to the details of individual copies now located around the world - their bindings, marginalia, general condition, sales history, and location - to discuss five major themes: owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare's posthumous reputation: a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognize Shakespeare.
Author: Steve Mentz
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847064922
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 135
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Book Description
Fascinating study revealing Shakespeare's career-long engagement with the sea and his frequent use of maritime imagery.
Author: Stuart Gillespie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474216064
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Shakespeare's Books contains nearly 200 entries covering the full range of literature Shakespeare was acquainted with, including classical, historical, religious and contemporary works. The dictionary covers works whose importance to Shakespeare has emerged more clearly in recent years due to new research, as well as explaining current thinking on long-recognized sources such as Plutarch, Ovid, Holinshed, Ariosto and Montaigne. Entries for all major sources include surveys of the writer's place in Shakespeare's time, detailed discussion of their relation to his work, and full bibliography. These are enhanced by sample passages from early modern England writers, together with reproductions of pages from the original texts. Now available in paperback with a new preface bringing the book up to date, this is an invaluable reference tool.
Author: Jan Kott
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 0804152195
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
Shakespeare, Our Contemporary is a provocative, original study of the major plays of Shakespeare. More than that, it is one of the few critical works to have strongly influenced theatrical productions. Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz are among the many directors who have acknowledged their debt to Jan Kott, finding in his analogies between Shakespearean situations and those in modern life and drama the seeds of vital new stage conceptions. Shakespeare, Our Contemporary has been translated into nineteen languages since it appeared in 1961, and readers all over the world have similarly found their responses to Shakespeare broadened and enriched.
Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557835611
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
(Applause Books). "With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his." - From SHAW ON SHAKESPEARE Celebrated playwright, critic and essayist George Bernard Shaw was more like the Elizabethan master that he would ever admit. Both men were intristic dramatists who shared a rich and abiding respect for the stage. Shakespeare was the produce of a tempestuous and enlightening era under the reign of his patron, Queen Elizabeth I; while G.B.S. reflected the racy and risque spirt of the late 19th century as the champion of modern drama by playwrights like Ibsen, and, later, himself. Culled from Shaw's reviews, prefaces, letters to actors and critics, and other writings, SHAW ON SHAKESPEARE offers a fascinating and unforgettable portrait of the 16th century playwright by his most outspoken critic. This is a witty and provocative classic that combines Shaw's prodigious critical acumen with a superlative prose style second to none (except, perhaps, Shakespeare!).
Author: Peter Chrisp
Publisher: DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley)
ISBN: 9780241187579
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Did you know special effects were used in Shakespeare's plays? That devils and ghosts came up through trapdoors in the stage? This book helps you find out how in Eyewitness Shakespeare and discover the fascinating life and times of one of the world's greatest playwrights.
Author: James Shapiro
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525522298
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
One of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year • A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • A New York Times Notable Book A timely exploration of what Shakespeare’s plays reveal about our divided land. “In this sprightly and enthralling book . . . Shapiro amply demonstrates [that] for Americans the politics of Shakespeare are not confined to the public realm, but have enormous relevance in the sphere of private life.” —The Guardian (London) The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes—presidents and activists, soldiers and writers, conservatives and liberals alike—have turned to Shakespeare’s works to explore the nation’s fault lines. In a narrative arching from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned. From Abraham Lincoln’s and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth’s, competing Shakespeare obsessions to the 2017 controversy over the staging of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated, Shakespeare in a Divided America reveals how no writer has been more embraced, more weaponized, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history.
