Shakespeare's Poetics

Shakespeare's Poetics PDF Author: Sarah Dewar-Watson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317056043
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
The startling central idea behind this study is that the rediscovery of Aristotle's Poetics in the sixteenth century ultimately had a profound impact on almost every aspect of Shakespeare's late plays”their sources, subject matter and thematic concerns. Shakespeare's Poetics reveals the generic complexity of Shakespeare's late plays to be informed by contemporary debates about the tonal and structural composition of tragicomedy. Author Sarah Dewar-Watson re-examines such plays as The Winter's Tale, Pericles and The Tempest in light of the important work of reception which was undertaken in Italy by pioneering theorists such as Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio (1504-73) and Giambattista Guarini (1538-1612). The author demonstrates ways in which these theoretical developments filtered from their intellectual base in Italy to the playhouses of early modern England via the work of dramatists such as Jonson and Fletcher. Dewar-Watson argues that the effect of this widespread revaluation of genre not only extends as far as Shakespeare, but that he takes a leading role in developing its possibilities on the English stage. In the course of pursuing this topic, Dewar-Watson also engages with several areas of current scholarly debate: the nature of Shakespeare's authorship; recent interest in and work on Shakespeare's later plays; and new critical work on Italian language-learning in Renaissance England. Finally, Shakespeare's Poetics develops current critical thinking about the place of Greek literature in Renaissance England, particularly in relation to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's Poetics

Shakespeare's Poetics PDF Author: Sarah Dewar-Watson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317056043
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book

Book Description
The startling central idea behind this study is that the rediscovery of Aristotle's Poetics in the sixteenth century ultimately had a profound impact on almost every aspect of Shakespeare's late plays”their sources, subject matter and thematic concerns. Shakespeare's Poetics reveals the generic complexity of Shakespeare's late plays to be informed by contemporary debates about the tonal and structural composition of tragicomedy. Author Sarah Dewar-Watson re-examines such plays as The Winter's Tale, Pericles and The Tempest in light of the important work of reception which was undertaken in Italy by pioneering theorists such as Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio (1504-73) and Giambattista Guarini (1538-1612). The author demonstrates ways in which these theoretical developments filtered from their intellectual base in Italy to the playhouses of early modern England via the work of dramatists such as Jonson and Fletcher. Dewar-Watson argues that the effect of this widespread revaluation of genre not only extends as far as Shakespeare, but that he takes a leading role in developing its possibilities on the English stage. In the course of pursuing this topic, Dewar-Watson also engages with several areas of current scholarly debate: the nature of Shakespeare's authorship; recent interest in and work on Shakespeare's later plays; and new critical work on Italian language-learning in Renaissance England. Finally, Shakespeare's Poetics develops current critical thinking about the place of Greek literature in Renaissance England, particularly in relation to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's Christianity

Shakespeare's Christianity PDF Author: E. Beatrice Batson
Publisher: Baylor University Press
ISBN: 1932792368
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
This volume explores the influences of Catholicism and Protestantism in a trio of Shakespeare's tragedies: Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Bypassing the discussion of Shakespeare's personal religious beliefs, Batson instead focuses on distinct footprints left by Catholic and Protestant traditions that underlie and inform Shakespeare's artistic genius.

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry PDF Author: Patrick Cheney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139827464
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This Companion provides a full introduction to the poetry of William Shakespeare through discussion of his freestanding narrative poems, the Sonnets, and his plays. Fourteen leading international scholars provide accessible and authoritative chapters on all relevant topics: from Shakespeare's seminal role in the development of English poetry, the wide-ranging practice of his poetic form, and his enigmatic place in print and manuscript culture, to his immersion in English Renaissance politics, religion, classicism, and gender dynamics. With individual chapters on Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Passionate Pilgrim, 'The Phoenix and the Turtle', the Sonnets, and A Lover's Complaint, the Companion also includes chapters on the presence of poetry in the dramatic works, on the relation between poetry and performance, and on the reception and influence of the poems. The volume includes a chronology of Shakespeare's life, a note on reference works, and a reading list for each chapter.

Shakespeare and the Poets' War

Shakespeare and the Poets' War PDF Author: James Bednarz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231504263
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
In a remarkable piece of detective work, Shakespeare scholar James Bednarz traces the Bard's legendary wit-combats with Ben Jonson to their source during the Poets' War. Bednarz offers the most thorough reevaluation of this "War of the Theaters" since Harbage's Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions, revealing a new vision of Shakespeare as a playwright intimately concerned with the production of his plays, the opinions of his rivals, and the impact his works had on their original audiences. Rather than viewing Shakespeare as an anonymous creator, Shakespeare and the Poets' War re-creates the contentious entertainment industry that fostered his genius when he first began to write at the Globe in 1599. Bednarz redraws the Poets' War as a debate on the social function of drama and the status of the dramatist that involved not only Shakespeare and Jonson but also the lesser known John Marston and Thomas Dekker. He shows how this controversy, triggered by Jonson's bold new dramatic experiments, directly influenced the writing of As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet, gave rise to the first modern drama criticism in English, and shaped the way we still perceive Shakespeare today.

Shakespeare's Perjured Eye

Shakespeare's Perjured Eye PDF Author: Joel Fineman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520313844
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Fineman argues that in the sonnets Shakespeare developed an unprecedented poetic persona, one that subsequently became the governing model of all literary subjectivity. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Poetry

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Poetry PDF Author: Jonathan Post
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191665061
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 784

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Poetry contains thirty-eight original essays written by leading Shakespeareans around the world. Collectively, these essays seek to return readers to a revivified understanding of Shakespeare's verbal artistry in both the poems and the drama. The volume understands poetry to be not just a formal category designating a particular literary genre but to be inclusive of the dramatic verse as well, and of Shakespeare's influence as a poet on later generations of writers in English and beyond. Focusing on a broad set of interpretive concerns, the volume tackles general matters of Shakespeare's style, earlier and later; questions of influence from classical, continental, and native sources; the importance of words, line, and rhyme to meaning; the significance of songs and ballads in the drama; the place of gender in the verse, including the relationship of Shakespeare's poetry to the visual arts; the different values attached to speaking 'Shakespeare' in the theatre; and the adaptation of Shakespearean verse (as distinct from performance) into other periods and languages. The largest section, with ten essays, is devoted to the poems themselves: the Sonnets, plus 'A Lover's Complaint', the narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, and 'The Phoenix and the Turtle'. If the volume as a whole urges a renewed involvement in the complex matter of Shakespeare's poetry, it does so, as the individual essays testify, by way of responding to critical trends and discoveries made during the last three decades.

The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Poetry

The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Poetry PDF Author: Michael Schoenfeldt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139493485
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Shakespeare's poems, aside from the enduring appeal of the Sonnets, are much less familiar today than his plays, despite being enormously popular in his lifetime. This Introduction celebrates the achievement of Shakespeare as a poet, providing students with ways of understanding and enjoying his remarkable poems. It honours the aesthetic and intellectual complexity of the poems without making them seem unapproachably complicated, outlining their exquisite pleasures and absorbing enigmas. Schoenfeldt suggests that today's readers are better able to analyze aspects of the poems that were formerly ignored or the source of scandal - the articulation of a fervent same-sex love, for example, or the incipient racism inherent in a hierarchy of light and dark. By engaging closely with Shakespeare's major poems - 'Venus and Adonis', 'Lucrece', 'The Phoenix and the Turtle', the Sonnets and 'A Lover's Complaint' - the Introduction demonstrates how much these extraordinary poems still have to say to us.

Reading Shakespeare's Poetry

Reading Shakespeare's Poetry PDF Author: Dympna Callaghan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118312317
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Reading Shakespeare’s Poetry A lively exploration of Shakespeare’s poems and how they speak to readers Reading Shakespeare’s Poetry presents a fresh interpretation of Shakespeare’s non-dramatic poems, providing insights into the individual poems, their themes and composition, and their relation to the cultural context of Shakespeare’s world. Dympna Callaghan considers what makes Shakespeare’s language poetic and shows how his poetry is comprised not only of lyrical intensity but also of the language of everyday life. Presented chronologically, lucidly-written chapters examine Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, the Sonnets, and A Lover’s Complaint. Special attention is paid to the distinctive ways in which lineation, rhyme, verse forms, and meter serve to delineate or erase the boundaries of Shakespeare’s poetry. Throughout the book, the author explains how Shakespeare’s language is influenced by predecessors such as Ovid and Petrarch while highlighting how ideas about the social and cultural function of poetry permeate Shakespeare’s works. Offers an eminently readable yet scholarly exploration of the literary importance of Shakespeare’s poems Explains the technical features of Shakespeare’s poetic language Addresses the significance of the material form in which Shakespeare’s poems appear Includes a discussion of songs, poems, and sonnets embedded in Shakespeare’s dramatic verse Reading Shakespeare’s Poetry is both a fresh and indispensable guide to the poems and a significant critical intervention. This is a must-have book for scholars, students, and general readers alike.

Shakespeare and Protestant Poetics

Shakespeare and Protestant Poetics PDF Author: Jason Gleckman
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9813295996
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
This book explores the impact of the sixteenth-century Reformation on the plays of William Shakespeare. Taking three fundamental Protestant concerns of the era – (double) predestination, conversion, and free will – it demonstrates how Protestant theologians, in England and elsewhere, re-imagined these longstanding Christian concepts from a specifically Protestant perspective. Shakespeare utilizes these insights to generate his distinctive view of human nature and the relationship between humans and God. Through in-depth readings of the Shakespeare comedies ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, and ‘Twelfth Night’, the romance ‘A Winter’s Tale’, and the tragedies of ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Hamlet’, this book examines the results of almost a century of Protestant thought upon literary art.

The Routledge Research Companion to Shakespeare and Classical Literature

The Routledge Research Companion to Shakespeare and Classical Literature PDF Author: Sean Keilen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317041674
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
In this wide-ranging and ambitiously conceived Research Companion, contributors explore Shakespeare’s relationship to the classic in two broad senses. The essays analyze Shakespeare’s specific debts to classical works and weigh his classicism’s likeness and unlikeness to that of others in his time; they also evaluate the effects of that classical influence to assess the extent to which it is connected with whatever qualities still make Shakespeare, himself, a classic (arguably the classic) of modern world literature and drama. The first sense of the classic which the volume addresses is the classical culture of Latin and Greek reading, translation, and imitation. Education in the canon of pagan classics bound Shakespeare together with other writers in what was the dominant tradition of English and European poetry and drama, up through the nineteenth and even well into the twentieth century. Second—and no less central—is the idea of classics as such, that of books whose perceived value, exceeding that of most in their era, justifies their protection against historical and cultural change. The volume’s organizing insight is that as Shakespeare was made a classic in this second, antiquarian sense, his work’s reception has more and more come to resemble that of classics in the first sense—of ancient texts subject to labored critical study by masses of professional interpreters who are needed to mediate their meaning, simply because of the texts’ growing remoteness from ordinary life, language, and consciousness. The volume presents overviews and argumentative essays about the presence of Latin and Greek literature in Shakespeare’s writing. They coexist in the volume with thought pieces on the uses of the classical as a historical and pedagogical category, and with practical essays on the place of ancient classics in today’s Shakespearean classrooms.