Shakespeare S Tragic Form

Author : Ruth Nevo
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 424 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2015-03-08
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781400872602

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Tragic Form in Shakespeare by Ruth Nevo Pdf

A "symbolist" approach has dominated Shakespearean criticism for many years, but Ruth Nevo believes that the emphasis on static and pictorial aspects has obscured the essentially dynamic nature of dramatic expression and this study of the development of Shakespeare's tragic form is offered to correct the imbalance. From detailed analyses of each of Shakespeare's ten tragedies emerges a characteristic structure—a five-phased movement of discovery—that articulates and orders the traditional components of tragedy. This sequence is one of predicament, psychomachia, peripeteia, perspectives of irony and pathos, and catastrophe. It is a continuous, accumulative, and consummatory one, rather than a simple up-down movement or even a more complex thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Inheriting a five-act model and its developed rationale, Shakespeare used it to express an ever richer and more complex tragic experience. As the protagonist's life unfolds before us, the development of his tragic recognition is coextensive with the whole of the action. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author : Robert Lanier Reid
Publisher : University of Delaware Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Drama
ISBN : 087413725X

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Shakespeare's Tragic Form by Robert Lanier Reid Pdf

Since about 1960, when five-act division in Shakespeare's plays was strongly disputed, most critics have focused on individual scenes rather than holistic form. This book argues for Shakespeare's use of five acts, arranged in three cycles to form a 2-1-2 pattern. It also examines the role of multiple plots and centers of consciousness, especially in the festive comedies and romances. Additionally, it traces Shakespeare's gradual mastery of the art of epiphany, compares it to Spenser's complementary focus on transcendent reality, and traces in Macbeth the dark mode of Shakespeare's dramaturgical pattern.

Author : John Bayley
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2021-03-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781000350449

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Shakespeare and Tragedy by John Bayley Pdf

Every generation develops its own approach to tragedy, attitudes successively influenced by such classic works as A. C. Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy and the studies in interpretation by G. Wilson Knight. A comprehensive new book on the subject by an author of the same calibre was long overdue. In his book, originally published in 1981, John Bayley discusses the Roman plays, Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens as well as the four major tragedies. He shows how Shakespeare’s most successful tragic effects hinge on an opposition between the discourses of character and form, role and context. For example, in Lear the dramatis personae act in the dramatic world of tragedy which demands universality and high rhetoric of them. Yet they are human and have their being in the prosaic world of domesticity and plain speaking. The inevitable intrusion of the human world into the world of tragedy creates the play’s powerful off-key effects. Similarly, the existential crisis in Macbeth can be understood in terms of the tension between accomplished action and the free-ranging domain of consciousness. What is the relation between being and acting? How does an audience become intimate with a protagonist who is alienated from his own play? What did Shakespeare add to the form and traditions of tragedy? Do his masterpieces in the genre disturb and transform it in unexpected ways? These are the issues raised by this lucid and imaginative study. Professor Bayley’s highly original rethinking of the problems will be a challenge to the Shakespearean scholar as well as an illumination to the general reader.

Author : Kenneth Muir
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2013-10-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781136568534

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Shakespeare's Tragic Sequence by Kenneth Muir Pdf

First published in 1972. The emphasis of this book is that each of Shakespeare's tragedies demanded its own individual form and that although certain themes run through most of the tragedies, nearly all critics refrain from the attempt to apply external rules to them. The plays are almost always concerned with one person; they end with the death of the hero; the suffering and calamity that befall him are exceptional; and the tragedies include the medieval idea of the reversal of fortune.

Author : Janette Dillon
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 147 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2007-03-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781139462433

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The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Tragedies by Janette Dillon Pdf

Macbeth clutches an imaginary dagger; Hamlet holds up Yorick's skull; Lear enters with Cordelia in his arms. Do these memorable and iconic moments have anything to tell us about the definition of Shakespearean tragedy? Is it in fact helpful to talk about 'Shakespearean tragedy' as a concept, or are there only Shakespearean tragedies? What kind of figure is the tragic hero? Is there always such a figure? What makes some plays more tragic than others? Beginning with a discussion of tragedy before Shakespeare and considering Shakespeare's tragedies chronologically one by one, this 2007 book seeks to investigate such questions in a way that highlights both the distinctiveness and shared concerns of each play within the broad trajectory of Shakespeare's developing exploration of tragic form.

Author : A. C. Bradley
Publisher : Prabhat Prakashan
Page : 662 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2021-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Shakespearean Tragedy by A. C. Bradley Pdf

"These lectures are based on a selection from materials used in teaching at Liverpool, Glasgow, and Oxford; and I have for the most part preserved the lecture form. The point of view taken in them is explained in the Introduction. I should, of course, wish them to be read in their order, and a knowledge of the first two is assumed in the remainder; but readers who may prefer to enter at once on the discussion of the several plays can do so by beginning at page 89. "Any one who writes on Shakespeare must owe much to his predecessors. Where I was conscious of a particular obligation, I have acknowledged it; but most of my reading of Shakespearean criticism was done many years ago, and I can only hope that I have not often reproduced as my own what belongs to another." -Preface

Author : D. Douglas Waters
Publisher : Associated University Presse
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : Christian drama, English
ISBN : 0838635288

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Christian Settings in Shakespeare's Tragedies by D. Douglas Waters Pdf

Battenhouse's Shakespearean tragedy: Its art and Christian premises, Irving Ribner's Patterns in Shakespearian tragedy, Virgil K. Whitaker's The mirror up to nature: The techniques of Shakespeare's tragedies, and Robert Grams Hunter's Shakespeare and the mystery of God's judgments. Waters questions, for example, Battenhouse's validity of Christian theological and didactic emphases on the old purgation theory of catharsis. His approach differs also from Northrop Frye's views on the tragedies in Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, an archetypal approach to representative plays including the tragedies.

Author : Kiernan Ryan
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2021-07-29
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781472587008

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Shakespearean Tragedy by Kiernan Ryan Pdf

This ground-breaking book reveals the prophetic, revolutionary vision that drives Shakespeare's tragedies, tracing its unbroken development from its beginnings in the Henry VI plays and Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, right through to his last, Coriolanus. The four full-length studies at the heart of the book focus in depth on Shakespeare's four greatest tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespearean Tragedy engages with each of these titanic masterpieces as a singular, complete work of dramatic art with its own distinctive concerns and critical challenges, but with the same unmistakably Shakespearean tragic vision at its core. Through compelling new readings of the plays, grounded in close analysis of their language and form, Kiernan Ryan shows how Shakespeare dramatizes the tragic realities of his world from the standpoint of the transfigured future that our world still awaits.

Author : C. J. Sisson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 110 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2017-03-31
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781315306377

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Shakespeare's Tragic Justice by C. J. Sisson Pdf

The problem of justice seems to have haunted Shakespeare as it haunted Renaissance Christendom. In this book, first published in 1963, four aspects of the problems of justice in action in Shakespeare’s great tragedies are explored. This study is based on the lifetime’s research of Elizabethan habits of mind by one of the most distinguished Shakespearean scholars, and will be of interest to students of English Literature, Drama and Performance.

Author : James Cunningham
Publisher : Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0838637116

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Shakespeare's Tragedies and Modern Critical Theory by James Cunningham Pdf

Individual chapters deal with cultural materialism, new historicism, poststructuralism, and feminist criticism. The theoretical basis of each critical mode is examined and some representative critiques analyzed. Most importantly, in each chapter the various interpretations are tested against Shakespeare's texts, and the strengths and weaknesses of the different readings are assessed.

Author : Kent Cartwright
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2010-11-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780271039633

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Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double by Kent Cartwright Pdf

Author : A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 195 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2021-08-23
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9798523381119

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Shakespearean Tragedy Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley Pdf

Excerpt: ... The question we are to consider in this lecture may be stated in a variety of ways. We may put it thus: What is the substance of a Shakespearean tragedy, taken in abstraction both from its form and from the differences in point of substance between one tragedy and another? Or thus: What is the nature of the tragic aspect of life as represented by Shakespeare? What is the general fact shown now in this tragedy and now in that? And we are putting the same question when we ask: What is Shakespeare's tragic conception, or conception of tragedy? These expressions, it should be observed, do not imply that Shakespeare himself ever asked or answered such a question; that he set himself to reflect on the tragic aspects of life, that he framed a tragic conception, and still less that, like Aristotle or Corneille, he had a theory of the kind of poetry called tragedy. These things are all possible; how far any one of them is probable we need not discuss; but none of them is presupposed by the question we are going to consider. This question implies only that, as a matter of fact, Shakespeare in writing tragedy did represent a certain aspect of life in a certain way, and that through examination of his writings we ought to be able, to some extent, to describe this aspect and way in terms addressed to the understanding. Such a description, so far as it is true and adequate, may, after these explanations, be called indifferently an account of the substance of Shakespearean tragedy, or an account of Shakespeare's conception of tragedy or view of the tragic fact. Two further warnings may be required. In the first place, we must remember that the tragic aspect of life is only one aspect. We cannot arrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world from his tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regarding things, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any one of their important works. Speaking very broadly, one may say that these poets at their best always look at things in one light; but Hamlet and Henry IV. and Cymbeline reflect things from quite distinct positions, and Shakespeare's whole dramatic view is not to be identified with any one of these reflections. And, in the second place, I may repeat that in these lectures, at any rate for the most part, we are to be content with his dramatic view, and are not to ask whether it corresponded exactly with his opinions or creed outside his poetry--the opinions or creed of the being whom we sometimes oddly call 'Shakespeare the man.' It does not seem likely that outside his poetry he was a very simple-minded Catholic or Protestant or Atheist, as some have maintained; but we cannot be sure, as with those other poets we can, that in his works he expressed his deepest and most cherished convictions on ultimate questions, or even that he had any. And in his dramatic conceptions there is enough to occupy us....

Author : Claire McEachern
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2013-08-08
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781107019775

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The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy by Claire McEachern Pdf

This updated Companion has been fully revised and includes an extensively overhauled bibliography and four new chapters by leading scholars.

Author : Andrew Cecil Bradley
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 524 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 1967
Category : Electronic
ISBN : UCSC:32106005878720

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Shakespearean Tragedy by Andrew Cecil Bradley Pdf

1908. From the Introduction: In these lectures I propose to consider the four principal tragedies of Shakespeare from a single point of view. Nothing will be said of Shakespeare's place in the history of either English literature or of the drama in general. No attempt will be made to compare him with other writers. I shall leave untouched, or merely glanced at, questions regarding his life and character, the development of his genius and art, the genuineness, sources, texts, interrelations of his various works. Even what may be called, in a restricted sense, the poetry of the four tragedies-the beauties of style, diction, versification-I shall pass by in silence. Our one object will be what, again in a restricted sense, may be called dramatic appreciation; to increase our understanding and enjoyment of these works as dramas; to learn to apprehend the action and some of the personages of each with a somewhat greater truth and intensity, so that they may assume in our imaginations a shape a little less unlike the shape they wore in the imagination of their creator.

Author : Giulio Marra
Publisher : Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Drama
ISBN : UOM:39015040551304

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Shakespeare and this "imperfect" World by Giulio Marra Pdf

This study on Shakespearean theatre attempts to correlate the cognitive impulse animating the character with the ensuing dramatic form. A Shakespearean character determines the play's structure through the intrinsic need to resolve the problem he is brought up against. He does this by utilizing theatrical means, metadramatic elements, which themselves become an integral part of the concept of theatre. Any external moral framework constricting the character within traditional dramatic forms appears, therefore, to impose perspectival limits on the text. Rather, The Tempest provides the reader with intrinsic and general guidelines through the skepticism of Prospero. Through concepts of «wonder» and «limitation» he defines the boundaries of action thus determining the idea of self-knowledge. General aesthetic and philosophical problems are embedded within the texture of the play's structure.