Download or read book Shakespeare and Modern Culture written by Marjorie Garber and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world's premier Shakespeare scholars comes a magisterial new study whose premise is "that Shakespeare makes modern culture and that modern culture makes Shakespeare." Shakespeare has determined many of the ideas that we think of as "naturally" true: ideas about human character, individuality and selfhood, government, leadership, love and jealousy, men and women, youth and age. Marjorie Garber delves into ten plays to explore the interrelationships between Shakespeare and contemporary culture, from James Joyce's Ulysses to George W. Bush's reading list. From the persistence of difference in Othello to the matter of character in Hamlet to the untimeliness of youth in Romeo and Juliet, Garber discusses how these ideas have been re-imagined in modern fiction, theater, film, and the news, and in the literature of psychology, sociology, political theory, business, medicine, and law. Shakespeare and Modern Culture is a brilliant recasting of our own mental and emotional landscape as refracted through the prism of the protean Shakespeare.
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Question of Culture written by D. Bruster and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last two decades have witnessed a profound change in the way we receive the literary texts of early modern England. One could call this a move from 'text' to 'culture'. Put briefly, earlier critics tended to focus on literary texts, strictly conceived: plays, poems, prose fictions, essays. Since the mid-1980s, however, it has been just as likely for critics to speak of the 'culture' of early modern England, even when they do so in conjunction with analysis of literary texts. This 'cultural turn' has clearly enriched the way in which we read the texts of early modern England, but the interdisciplinary practices involved have frequently led critics to make claims about materials - and about the 'culture' these materials appear to embody - that exceed those materials' representativeness. Shakespeare and the Question of Culture addresses the central issue of 'culture' in early modern studies through both literary history and disciplinary critique. Douglas Bruster argues that the 'culture' literary critiques investigate through the works of Shakespeare and other writers is largely a literary culture, and he examines what this necessary limitation of the scope of 'cultural studies' means for the discipline of early modern studies.
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Culture of Paradox written by Dr Peter G Platt and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-28 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring Shakespeare's intellectual interest in placing both characters and audiences in a state of uncertainty, mystery, and doubt, this book interrogates the use of paradox in Shakespeare's plays and in performance. By adopting this discourse-one in which opposites can co-exist and perspectives can be altered, and one that asks accepted opinions, beliefs, and truths to be reconsidered-Shakespeare used paradox to question love, gender, knowledge, and truth from multiple perspectives. Committed to situating literature within the larger culture, Peter Platt begins by examining the Renaissance culture of paradox in both the classical and Christian traditions. He then looks at selected plays in terms of paradox, including the geographical site of Venice in Othello and The Merchant of Venice, and equity law in The Comedy of Errors, Merchant, and Measure for Measure. Platt also considers the paradoxes of theater and live performance that were central to Shakespearean drama, such as the duality of the player, the boy-actor and gender, and the play/audience relationship in the Henriad, Hamlet, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. In showing that Shakespeare's plays create and are created by a culture of paradox, Platt offers an exciting and innovative investigation of Shakespeare's cognitive and affective power over his audience.
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England written by Dennis Taylor and published by Studies in Religion and Litera. This book was released on 2003 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of Shakespeare's Catholic contexts has occupied many scholars in recent years and this study brings together 16 original essays examining Shakespeare's work in the light of revisionist scholarship, from monastic life in 'Measure for Measure' to Puritanism in 'Hamlet'.
Download or read book Culture and Society in Shakespeare s Day written by Robert Evans and published by Infobase Holdings, Inc. This book was released on 2020-07-01 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging, illustrated overview, Culture and Society in Shakespeare's Day gives valuable historical context to Shakespeare's works, explaining what daily life was like in the country, in the city, and among the nobility, since all of these settings feature prominently in his plays. Major events from the time period, including the exploration of the New World and the clashes between the British Navy and the Spanish Armada, add important perspective for students studying Shakespeare and his varied works. Coverage includes: Catholicism Rituals of birth, marriage, and death The universities Folklore, superstition, and witchcraft Puritanism Crime Plague Medicine The Spanish Armada Exploration of the New World The Gunpowder Plot And much more.
Download or read book How to Think Like Shakespeare written by Scott Newstok and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book offers a short, spirited defense of rhetoric and the liberal arts as catalysts for precision, invention, and empathy in today's world. The author, a professor of Shakespeare studies at a liberal arts college and a parent of school-age children, argues that high-stakes testing and a culture of assessment have altered how and what students are taught, as courses across the arts, humanities, and sciences increasingly are set aside to make room for joyless, mechanical reading and math instruction. Students have been robbed of a complete education, their imaginations stunted by this myopic focus on bare literacy and numeracy. Education is about thinking, Newstok argues, rather than the mastery of a set of rigidly defined skills, and the seemingly rigid pedagogy of the English Renaissance produced some of the most compelling and influential examples of liberated thinking. Each of the fourteen chapters explores an essential element of Shakespeare's world and work, aligns it with the ideas of other thinkers and writers in modern times, and suggests opportunities for further reading. Chapters on craft, technology, attention, freedom, and related topics combine past and present ideas about education to build a case for the value of the past, the pleasure of thinking, and the limitations of modern educational practices and prejudices"--
Download or read book The Shakespeare Handbook written by Andrew Hiscock and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature and Culture Handbooks are an innovative series of guides to major periods, topics and authors in British and American literature and culture. Designed to provide a comprehensive, one-stop resource for literature students, each handbook provides the essential information and guidance needed from the beginning of a course through to developing more advanced knowledge and skills. Written in clear language by leading academics, they provide an indispensable introduction to key topics, including: • Introduction to authors, texts, historical and cultural contexts • Guides to key critics, concepts and topics • An overview of major critical approaches, changes in the canon and directions of current and future research • Case studies in reading literary and critical texts • Annotated bibliography (including websites), timeline, glossary of critical terms. The Shakespeare Handbook is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to Shakespeare and early modern literature.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture written by Robert Shaughnessy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-28 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a collection of essays on Shakespeare's life and works in popular forms and media.
Download or read book Here in This Island We Arrived written by Elisabeth H. Kinsley and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Elisabeth H. Kinsley weaves the stories of racially and ethnically distinct Shakespeare theatre scenes in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Manhattan into a single cultural history, revealing how these communities interacted with one another and how their work influenced ideas about race and belonging in the United States during a time of unprecedented immigration. As Progressive Era reformers touted the works of Shakespeare as an “antidote” to the linguistic and cultural mixing of American society, and some reformers attempted to use the Bard’s plays to “Americanize” immigrant groups on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, immigrants from across Europe appropriated Shakespeare for their own ends. Kinsley uses archival material such as reform-era handbooks, theatre posters, playbills, programs, sheet music, and reviews to demonstrate how, in addition to being a source of cultural capital, authority, and resistance for these communities, Shakespeare’s plays were also a site of cultural exchange. Performances of Shakespeare occasioned nuanced social encounters between New York’s empowered and marginalized groups and influenced sociocultural ideas about what Shakespeare, race, and national belonging should and could mean for Americans. Timely and immensely readable, this book explains how ideas about cultural belonging formed and transformed within a particular human community at a time of heightened demographic change. Kinsley’s work will be welcomed by anyone interested in the formation of national identity, immigrant communities, and the history of the theatre scene in New York and the rest of the United States.
Download or read book The Purpose of Playing written by Louis Montrose and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-06 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the role of Elizabethan drama in the shape of cultural belief, values, and understanding of political authority.
Download or read book This Is Shakespeare written by Emma Smith and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An electrifying new study that investigates the challenges of the Bard’s inconsistencies and flaws, and focuses on revealing—not resolving—the ambiguities of the plays and their changing topicality A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no other. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn’t tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant. In This Is Shakespeare, Emma Smith—an intellectually, theatrically, and ethically exciting writer—takes us into a world of politicking and copycatting, as we watch Shakespeare emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd (the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day), flirting with and skirting around the cutthroat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval, and technological change. Smith writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity, and sex. Instead of offering the answers, the Shakespeare she reveals poses awkward questions, always inviting the reader to ponder ambiguities.
Download or read book Shakespeare and the 99 written by Sharon O'Dair and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-08 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the discursive political lenses of Occupy Wall Street and the 99%, this volume of essays examines the study of Shakespeare and of literature more generally in today’s climate of educational and professional uncertainty. Acknowledging the problematic relationship of higher education to the production of inequity and hierarchy in our society, essays in this book examine the profession, our pedagogy, and our scholarship in an effort to direct Shakespeare studies, literary studies, and higher education itself toward greater equity for students and professors. Covering a range of topics from diverse positions and perspectives, these essays confront and question foundational assumptions about higher education, and hence society, including intellectual merit and institutional status. These essays comprise a timely conversation critical for understanding our profession in “post-Occupy” America.
Download or read book Shakespeare in a Divided America written by James Shapiro and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Reinventing Shakespeare written by Gary Taylor and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses changing interpretations of Shakespeare and his plays through the centuries, arguing that claims of his uniqueness reflect the characteristics of particular eras and critics more than Shakespeare.
Download or read book The Case for Shakespeare written by Scott McCrea and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2005-01-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon really did write the plays and poems attributed to him via a literary forensics case that puts all other authorship theories to rest.
Download or read book Contested Will written by James Shapiro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-04-19 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays.
Download or read book The Shakespeare Myth written by Graham Holderness and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Q. Is 'the Shakespeare connection' (a) a family tree, (b) a drug racket, (c) a railway journey? A. It is all three. From the Carling Black Label television advertisement to the design of the £20 note, from Tony Hancock and Edna Everage to the Stratford Memorial Theatre, from O level exam question to Zeffirelli on the big screen, Shakespeare has permeated English life like no one before or since. The plays and their legendary author function and flourish in more varied and diverse forms than are usually reckoned. Through post-structuralist linguistics, historiographical research, psychoanalytic theories and feminist sexual politics, radical criticism exposes the existence of a culturally produced and historically-determined 'Shakespeare myth'. This anthology of specifically-commissioned essays and interviews directly addresses that myth, as it works through ideology, popular culture, sexual politics, and the institutions of theatre, education and broadcasting. It demonstrates how the 'Shakespeare myth' functions in contemporary culture as an ideological framework for containing consensus and for sustaining delusions of unity, integration and harmony in the cultural superstructures of a divided and fractured society. For every particular present, Shakespeare is here, now, always, what is currently being made of him: to disclose the process of that making is the object of The Shakespeare myth." -- Back cover
