Perspective in Shakespeare's English Histories PDF Download

Author: Larry S. Champion
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 082033846X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Larry S. Champion examines Shakespeare's English history plays and describes the structural devices through which Shakespeare controls the audience's angle of vision and its response to the pattern of historical events. Champion observes the experimentation between stage worlds and the significance of a dramatic technique unique to the history play—one that combines the detachment of a documentary necessary for a broad intellectual view of history and the simultaneous engagement between character and spectator. Champion sees a conscious bifurcation occurring in Shakespeare's dramaturgy after Richard II. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare continues to focus on the psychological analysis and internalized protagonist which lead to his major tragic achievements. In King John and Henry IV, the playwright develops a middle ground between the polarities of Henry VI, in which the flat, onedimensional characters essentially serve the purposes of the narrative, and the tragedies, in which the spectator's consuming interest is in the developing centralfigure whose critical moments they share. Champion sees Henry V as the culmination of Shakespeare's e fforts in the English history play.

Author: Paul N. Siegel
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838632512
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Examines Shakespearean drama's Christian overtones, explaining why they have been ignored for so long and how those overtones can influence one's interpretation of Shakespeare's work.

Author: Phyllis Rackin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150172472X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Phyllis Rackin offers a fresh approach to Shakespeare's English history plays, rereading them in the context of a world where rapid cultural change transformed historical consciousness and gave the study of history a new urgency. Rackin situates Shakespeare's English chronicles among multiple discourses, particularly the controversies surrounding the functions of poetry, theater, and history. She focuses on areas of contention in Renaissance historiography that are also areas of concern in recent criticism-historical authority and causation, the problems of anachronism and nostalgia, and the historical construction of class and gender. She analyzes the ways in which the perfoace of history in Shakespeare's theater participated—and its representation in subsequent criticism still participates—in the contests between opposed theories of history and between the different ideological interests and historiographic practices they authorize. Celebrating the heroic struggles of the past and recording the patriarchal genealogies of kings and nobles, Tudor historians provided an implicit rationale for the hierarchical order of their own time; but the new public theater where socially heterogeneous audiences came together to watch common players enact the roles of their social superiors was widely perceived as subverting that order. Examining such sociohistorical factors as the roles of women and common men and the conditions of theatrical performance, Rackin explores what happened when elite historical discourse was trans porteto the public commercial theater. She argues that Shakespeare's chronicles transformed univocal historical writing into polyphonic theatrical scripts that expressed the contradictions of Elizabethan culture.

Author: Larry S. Champion
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820338443
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This work directs attention to the various structural devices by which Shakespeare creates and sustains anticipation in his audience whil simultaneously provoking them to participate in the tragic protagonist's anguish.

Author: Emma Smith
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470776889
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This Guide steers students through four centuries of critical writing on Shakespeare’s history plays, enhancing their enjoyment and broadening their critical repertoire. Guides students through four centuries of critical writing on Shakespeare’s history plays. Covers both significant early views and recent critical interventions. Substantial editorial material links the articles and places them in context. Annotated suggestions for further reading allow students to investigate further.

Author: Keith Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781315303062
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"In Shakespeare's Language, Keith Johnson offers an overview of the rich and dynamic history of the reception and study of Shakespeare's language from his death right up to the present. The historical approach provides a comprehensive overview, plotting the attitudes towards Shakespeare's language, as well as a history of its study. This approach reveals how different cultural, literary and linguistic climates have moulded these attitudes and reflects changing linguistic climates. Shakespeare's Language is therefore not only an essential guide to the language of Shakespeare, but offers crucial insights to broader approaches to language as a whole"--

Author: Jean E. Howard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134946163
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Engendering a Nation adopts a sophisticated feminist analysis to examine the place of gender in contesting representations of nationhood in early modern England. Plays featured include: * King John * Henry VI, Part I * Henry VI, Part II * Henry, Part III * Richard III * Richard II * Henry V. It will be a must for students and scholars interested in the cultural and social implications of Shakespeare today.

Author: BRADD. SHORE
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032017174
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book provides a bridge between Shakespeare Studies and classical social theory, opening up readings of Shakespeare to a new audience outside of literary studies and the humanities. Shakespeare has long been known as a 'great thinker' and this book reads his plays through the lens of an anthropologist, revealing new connections between Shakespeare's plays and the lives we now lead. Close readings of a selection of frequently studied plays - Hamlet, The Winter's Tale, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar and King Lear - engage with the plays in detail while connecting them with some of the biggest questions we all ask ourselves, about love, friendship, ritual, language, human interactions and the world around us. The plays are examined through various social theories including performance theory, cognitive theory, semiotics, exchange theory and structuralism. The book concludes with a consideration of how "the new astronomy" of his day and developments in optics changed the very idea of "perspective," and shaped Shakespeare's approach to embedding social theory in his dramatic texts. This accessible and engaging book will appeal to those approaching Shakespeare from outside literary studies, but will also be valuable to literature students approaching Shakespeare for the first time, or looking for a new angle on the plays.

Author: Keith Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315303051
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
In Shakespeare’s Language, Keith Johnson offers an overview of the rich and dynamic history of the reception and study of Shakespeare’s language from his death right up to the present. Tracing a chronological history of Shakespeare’s language, Keith Johnson also picks up on classic and contemporary themes, such as: lexical and digital studies original pronunciation rhetoric grammar. The historical approach provides a comprehensive overview, plotting the attitudes towards Shakespeare’s language, as well as a history of its study. This approach reveals how different cultural and literary trends have moulded these attitudes and reflects changing linguistic climates; the book also includes a chapter that looks to the future. Shakespeare’s Language is therefore not only an essential guide to the language of Shakespeare, but it offers crucial insights to broader approaches to language as a whole.

Author: Peter Saccio
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019988076X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Far more than any professional historian, Shakespeare is responsible for whatever notions most of us possess about English medieval history. Anyone who appreciates the dramatic action of Shakespeare's history plays but is confused by much of the historical detail will welcome this guide to the Richards, Edwards, Henrys, Warwicks and Norfolks who ruled and fought across Shakespeare's page and stage. Not only theater-goers and students, but today's film-goers who want to enrich their understanding of film adaptations of plays such as Richard III and Henry V will find this revised edition of Shakespeare's English Kings to be an essential companion. Saccio's engaging narrative weaves together three threads: medieval English history according to the Tudor chroniclers who provided Shakespeare with his material, that history as understood by modern scholars, and the action of the plays themselves. Including a new preface, a revised further reading list, genealogical charts, an appendix of names and titles, and an index, the second edition of Shakespeare's English Kings offers excellent background reading for all of the ten history plays.