Download or read book Reading Shakespeare Reading Me written by Leonard Barkan and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping, funny, joyful account of how the books you read shape your own life in surprising and profound ways. Bookworms know what scholars of literature are trained to forget: that when they devour a work of literary fiction, whatever else they may be doing, they are reading about themselves. Read Shakespeare, and you become Cleopatra, Hamlet, or Bottom. Or at the very least, you experience the plays as if you are in a small room alone with them, and they are speaking to you, to your life, to your sensibility. Drawing on fifty years as a Shakespearean, Leonard Barkan has produced a captivating book that traces the surprising and profound ways reading, teaching, acting, directing, and writing about Shakespeare has informed and shaped his life. Reading Shakespeare Reading Me is about Shakespeare and about Barkan, but to an even greater extent, it’s about reading. Barkan violates the rule of distance he was taught and has always taught his students. He asks: Where does this brilliantly contrived fiction actually touch me? Where is Shakespeare in effect telling the story of my life? Seen this way, Shakespeare becomes not only the material upon which an experienced and learned literary professional exercises his scholarly craft but also a record of the author's own life: a father with a painful secret, a mother who progressed from a flapper in the twenties to a divorcée in the thirties to an eccentrically lovable parent to the child she bore unexpectedly in middle age. King Lear, for Barkan, raises unanswerable questions about what exactly a father does after planting the seed. Mothers from Volumnia to Gertrude and even Lady Macbeth are all reconsidered in the light of the author’s experience as a son. The sonnets and comedies are seen through the eyes of a gay man who nevertheless weeps with joy when all the heterosexual couples are united at the end. The Winter’s Tale becomes a story about the ways in which beauty is superior to truth. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is interpreted through the author’s joyous experience of performing the role of Bottom and finding his aesthetic faith in the pantheon of antiquity. And the exquisitely poetical history play Richard II intersects with, of all things, Ru Paul’s Drag Race in an encounter between realness and royalness. Full of engrossing stories, and written with humor and genuine excitement about the written word, Reading Shakespeare Reading Me makes Shakespeare’s plays come alive in new ways.
Download or read book How to Read a Shakespeare Play written by David Bevington and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2006-06-16 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed for readers who want to know how to go about reading Shakespeare's works for pleasure, this work offers readings of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Henry IV Part I', 'Hamlet', 'King Lear' and 'The Tempest'. It also talks in theatrical terms about producing the plays on stage or screen.
Download or read book Shakespeare in Modern English written by Translated by Hugh Macdonald and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare in Modern English breaks the taboo about Shakespeare’s texts, which have long been regarded as sacred and untouchable while being widely and freely translated into foreign languages. It is designed to make Shakespeare more easily understood in the theatre without dumbing down or simplifying the content. Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’, ‘Coriolanus’ and ‘The Tempest’ are presented in Macdonald’s book in modern English. They show that these great plays lose nothing by being acted or read in the language we all use today. Shakespeare’s language is poetic, elaborately rich and memorable, but much of it is very difficult to comprehend in the theatre when we have no notes to explain allusions, obsolete vocabulary and whimsical humour. Foreign translations of Shakespeare are normally into their modern language. So why not ours too? The purpose in rendering Shakespeare into modern English is to enhance the enjoyment and understanding of audiences in the theatre. The translations are not designed for children or dummies, but for those who want to understand Shakespeare better, especially in the theatre. Shakespeare in Modern English will appeal to those who want to understand the rich and poetical language of Shakespeare in a more comprehensible way. It is also a useful tool for older students studying Shakespeare.
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 The Book Known as Q written by Robert Giroux and published by Vintage Books USA. This book was released on 1983 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Me and Shakespeare written by Herman Gollob and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2003-09-09 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of retiring from a successful publishing career, Herman Gollob attends a wonderful Broadway production of Hamlet starring Ralph Fiennes. Galvanized by the splendor of the language, the drama and the acting, he discovers an insatiable passion for all things Shakespeare. He reads broadly and deeply about the plays, discusses them with some of the great actors, directors, and teachers of our time, and soon finds himself teaching a popular Shakespeare class at a small New Jersey college. Gollob’s quest leads him to Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-on-Avon; to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.; to a summer course on Shakespeare at Oxford; and to London’s recently rebuilt Globe Theatre. As he pursues his glorious new obsession, Gollob reflects on his family’s bittersweet history, his encounters with writers, and the emergence of a Jewish identity that inspires some original ideas about Shakespeare’s plays. Me and Shakespeare is a joyful memoir that attests to the power of literature to re-invigorate our lives at any age.
Download or read book Reading Shakespeare with Young Adults written by Mary Ellen Dakin and published by National Council of Teachers of English (Ncte). This book was released on 2009 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the works of William Shakespeare are universally taught in high schools, many students have a similar reaction when confronted with the difficult task of reading Shakespeare for the first time. In Reading Shakespeare with Young Adults, Mary Ellen Dakin seeks to help teachers better understand not just how to teach the Bard's work, but also why. By celebrating the collaborative reading of Shakespeare's plays, Dakin explores different methods for getting students engaged--and excited--about the texts as they learn to construct meaning from Shakespeare's sixteenth-century language and connect it to their twenty-first-century lives. Filled with teacher-tested classroom activities, this book draws on often-taught plays, including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The ideas and strategies presented here are designed to be used with any of the Bard's plays and are intended to help all populations of students--mainstream, minority, bilingual, advanced, at-risk.
Download or read book She Hath Been Reading written by Katherine West Scheil and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century hundreds of clubs formed across the United States devoted to the reading of Shakespeare. From Pasadena, California, to the seaside town of Camden, Maine; from the isolated farm town of Ottumwa, Iowa, to Mobile, Alabama, on the Gulf coast, Americans were reading Shakespeare in astonishing numbers and in surprising places. Composed mainly of women, these clubs offered the opportunity for members not only to read and study Shakespeare but also to participate in public and civic activities outside the home. In She Hath Been Reading, Katherine West Scheil uncovers this hidden layer of intellectual activity that flourished in American society well into the twentieth century. Shakespeare clubs were crucial for women’s intellectual development because they provided a consistent intellectual stimulus (more so than was the case with most general women’s clubs) and because women discovered a world of possibilities, both public and private, inspired by their reading of Shakespeare. Indeed, gathering to read and discuss Shakespeare often led women to actively improve their lot in life and make their society a better place. Many clubs took action on larger social issues such as women’s suffrage, philanthropy, and civil rights. At the same time, these efforts served to embed Shakespeare into American culture as a marker for learning, self-improvement, civilization, and entertainment for a broad array of populations, varying in age, race, location, and social standing. Based on extensive research in the archives of the Folger Shakespeare Library and in dozens of local archives and private collections across America, She Hath Been Reading shows the important role that literature can play in the lives of ordinary people. As testament to this fact, the book includes an appendix listing more than five hundred Shakespeare clubs across America.
Download or read book Ecocriticism and Shakespeare written by Simon C. Estok and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-04-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the term 'ecophobia' as a way of understanding and organizing representations of contempt for the natural world. Estok argues that this vocabulary is both necessary to the developing area of ecocritical studies and for our understandings of the representations of 'Nature' in Shakespeare.
Download or read book How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare written by Ken Ludwig and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outlines an engaging way to instill an understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare's classic works in children, outlining a family-friendly method that incorporates the history of Shakespearean theater and society.
Download or read book Shakespeare Up Close written by and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
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 Will and Me written by Dominic Dromgoole and published by Penguin Books, Limited (UK). This book was released on 2007 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare has always been a big part of the author's life. This is the story of how he has stumbled, shambled and occasionally glided through the years with Shakespeare as his guide. It also shows us what Shakespeare's rough-and-ready genius can teach us about love, war, sex, death, drunkenness, friendship.
Download or read book Haunt Me Still written by Jennifer Lee Carrell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-02-22 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern heroine of the national bestseller Interred with Their Bones returns, in a thriller centering on Shakespeare's eeriest play. A legendary theatrical curse . . . A rune-engraved blade, a mysterious mirror, and an ancient cauldron . . . And a ritually murdered body laid out in the manner of ancient pagan burials. Kate Stanley, Jennifer Lee Carrell's dauntless Shakespearean scholarturned- director, made a memorable-and New York Times bestselling- debut in Interred with Their Bones. Having chased down her mentor's killer (and recovering one of Shakespeare's lost plays in the process), Kate's fame as a director with an expertise in "occult Shakespeare" catapults her-and Ben Pearl, her partner in crime-solving-into a new production of Macbeth, showcasing a fabled collection of objects relating both to the play and the historical Scottish king for whom it is named. The Bard's witch-haunted play is famously cursed, its reputation for malevolence so strong that many actors refuse to quote or even name the play aloud. And as rehearsals begin at the foot of Scotland's Dunsinnan Hill, it doesn't take long for the curse to stir. Strange references to the boy actor who first played Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's day-and died in the role-pop up. A trench atop Dunsinnan Hill is found filled with blood, and a severed human thumb turns up among the props. And Kate begins sleepwalking, waking early one morning alone atop the hill, her hands smeared with blood. Kate has no memory of how she got there, but later that day a local woman is found dead on the hill in circumstances that suggest not just ritual murder but ancient pagan sacrifice. With the police more focused on Kate as a suspect than as a possible future victim, she and Ben find themselves in a desperate race to discover a lost version of Macbeth, said to contain rituals of witchcraft aimed at conjuring demonic forces to gain forbidden knowledge. However much Kate would like to dismiss such rituals as superstition, someone else appears willing to kill for them-and for the manuscript said to spell them out. Marked for sacrifice, can Kate Stanley uncover the killer before she becomes the next victim? Watch a Video
Download or read book Posthuman Lear written by Craig Dionne and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Be sure to fasten your seatbelts while reading Craig Dionne's POSTHUMAN LEAR. In addition to being a wild ride through time and space, hurtling from late antiquity to post-Fukushima-radiated Japan by way of Shakespeare's motley crew of castaways on a storm-battered heath, the book also offers a reparative salve for our troubled anthropocene. As long as we speak what we feel, and reversing Edgar's famous line, even what we *ought* to say, with the shards and broken fragments of borrowed proverbial speech, we will at least have shelter with each other and with a newly denuded world, and in a consoling if partly ruined human language, from the coming Winter. Eileen JoyCraig Dionne has written Shakespearean criticism as it should be written: theoretically sophisticated, historically situated, while tied to the present moment, and thoroughly engaging as a piece of writing. Posthuman Lear will change the way you think ... about Lear and about the work we do. Sharon O'DairApproaching King Lear from an eco-materialist perspective, Posthuman Lear examines how the shift in Shakespeare's tragedy from court to stormy heath activates a different sense of language as tool-being - from that of participating in the flourish of aristocratic prodigality and circumstance, to that of survival and pondering one's interdependence with a denuded world. Dionne frames the thematic arc of Shakespeare's tragedy about the fall of a king as a tableaux of our post-sustainable condition. For Dionne, Lear's progress on the heath works as a parable of flat ontology.At the center of Dionne's analysis of rhetoric and prodigality in the tragedy is the argument that adages and proverbs, working as embodied forms of speech, offer insight into a nonhuman, fragmentary mode of consciousness. The Renaissance fascination with memory and proverbs provides an opportunity to reflect on the human as an instance of such enmeshed being where the habit of articulating memorized patterns of speech works on a somatic level. Dionne theorizes how mnemonic memory functions as a potentially empowering mode of consciousness inherited by our evolutionary history as a species, revealing how our minds work as imprinted machines to recall past prohibitions and useful affective scripts to aid in our interaction with the environment. The proverb is that linguistic inscription that defines the equivalent of human-animal imprinting, where the past is etched upon collective memory within 'adagential' being that lives on through the generations as autonomic cues for survival.Dionne's reimagining of this tragedy is important in the way it places Shakespeare's central existential questions - the meaning of familial love, commitments to friends, our place in a secular world - in a new relation to the main question of surviving within fixed environmental limits. Along the way, Dionne reflects on the larger theoretical implications of recycling the old historicism of early modern culture to speak to an eco-materialism, and why the modernist textual aesthetics of the self-distancing text seems inadequate when considering the uncertainty and trauma that underscores life in a post-sustainable culture. Dionne's final appeal is to "repurpose" our fatalism in the face of ecological disaster.
Download or read book The Shakespeare Book written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn the entire works of one of the greatest writers of the English language in The Shakespeare Book. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about the works of William Shakespeare in this overview guide, great for beginners looking to learn and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Shakespeare Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Shakespeare, with: - Every play and poem from Shakespeare’s canon, including lost plays and less well-known works of poetry - Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts - A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout - Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding The Shakespeare Book is the perfect introduction to the entire canon of Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets, and other poetry, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you’ll discover the complete works, from The Comedy of Errors, to the great tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Your Shakespeare Questions, Simply Explained This is a brilliant, innovative exploration of the entire canon of Shakespeare plays, sonnets, and other poetry with detailed plot summaries and a full analysis of the major characters and themes. If you thought it was difficult to learn about the works of one of the greatest writers in the English language, The Shakespeare Book presents key information in a simple layout. Every work is covered, from the comedies of Twelfth Night and As You Like It to the tragedies of Julius Caesar and Hamlet, with easy-to-understand graphics and illustrations bringing the themes, plots, characters, and language of Shakespeare to life. The Big Ideas Series With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Shakespeare Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.
Download or read book Unearthing the Past written by Leonard Barkan and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rediscovery of some of the most famous artworks of all time--statues lying underground beneath Rome--launched a thrilling archaeological adventure in the 15th century. In this remarkable book, Barkan probes the impact of these magnificent finds on Renaissance consciousness. 206 illustrations.
