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Author : Alexander Leggatt
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0521779421
An accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's comedies, dark comedies and romances, first published in 2001.
Author : Anthony J. Lewis
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2021-10-21
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780813184821
In this fascinating study, Anthony J. Lewis argues that it is the hero himself, rejecting a woman he apprehends as a threat, who is love's own worst enemy. Drawing upon classical and Renaissance drama, iconography, and a wide range of traditional and feminist criticism, Lewis demonstrates that in Shakespeare the actions and reactions of hero and heroine are contingent upon social setting—father-son relations, patriarchal restrictions on women, and cultural assumptions about gender-appropriate behavior. This compelling analysis shows how Shakespeare deepened the familiar love stores he inherited from New Comedy and Greek romance. Beginning with a penetrating analysis of the hero's contradictory response to sexual attraction, Lewis's discussion traces the heroine's reaction to abandonment and slander, and the lover's subsequent parallel descents into versions of bastardy and death. In arguing that comedy's happy ending is the product of the gender role reversals brought on by their evolving relationship itself, Lewis shows in meticulous detail how sexual stereotypes influence attitudes and restrict behavior. This perceptive discussion of male response to family and of female response to rejection will appeal to Shakespeare scholars and students, as well as to the theater community. Lewis's persuasive argument, that Shakespeare's heroes and heroines are, from the first, three-dimensional figures far removed from the stock types of Plautus, Terence, and his continental sources, will prove a valuable contribution to the ongoing feminist reappraisal of Shakespeare.
Author : William C. Carroll
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2014-07-14
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781400854813
This book argues that the idea of metamorphosis is central to both the theory and practice of Shakespearean comedy. It offers a synthesis of several major themes of Shakespearean comedy--identity, change, desire, marriage, and comic form--under the master trope of transformation. Originally published in 1985. 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 : Larry S. Champion
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 1970
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0674271416
The evolution of Shakespeare's comedy, in Larry Champion's view, is apparent in the expansion of his comic vision to include a complete reflection of human life while maintaining a comic detachment for the audience. Like the other popular dramatists of Elizabethan England, Shakespeare used the diverse comic motifs and devices which time and custom had proved effective. He went further, however, and created progressively deeper levels of characterization and plot interaction, thereby forming characters who were not merely devices subordinated to the needs of the plot. Shakespeare's development as a comic playwright, suggests Champion, was "consistently in the direction of complexity or depth of characterization." His earliest works, like those of his contemporaries, are essentially situation comedies: the humor arises from action rather than character. There is no significant development of the main characters; instead, they are manipulated into situations which are humorous as a result, for example, of mistaken identity or slapstick confusion. The ensuing phase of Shakespeare's comedy sets forth plots in which the emphasis is on identity rather than physical action, a revelation of character which occurs in one of two forms: either a hypocrite is exposed for what he actually is or a character who has assumed an unnatural or abnormal pose is forced to realize and admit the ridiculousness of his position. In the final comedies involving sin and sacrificial forgiveness, however, character development is concerned with a "transformation of values." Although each of the comedies is discussed, Champion concentrates on nine, dividing them according to the complexity of characterization. He pursues as well the playwright's efforts to achieve for the spectator the detached stance so vital to comedy. Shakespeare obtained this perspective, Champion observes, through experimentation with the use of material mirroring the main action--mockery, parody, or caricature--and through the use of a "comic pointer" who is himself involved in the action but is sufficiently independent of the other characters to provide the audience with an omniscient view.
Author : William Shakespeare
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 86 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 1898
Category : Electronic
ISBN : BNC:1001933371
Author : Northrop Frye
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 190 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1965
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0231082711
Describes the geography, plants and animals, history, economy, language, religions, culture, and people of the People's Republic of China, home of one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations.
Author : Heather Hirschfeld
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 592 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2018-09-06
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780191043451
The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy offers critical and contemporary resources for studying Shakespeare's comic enterprises. It engages with perennial, yet still urgent questions raised by the comedies and looks at them from a range of new perspectives that represent the most recent methodological approaches to Shakespeare, genre, and early modern drama. Several chapters take up firmly established topics of inquiry such Shakespeare's source materials, gender and sexuality, hetero- and homoerotic desire, race, and religion, and they reformulate these topics in the materialist, formalist, phenomenological, or revisionist terms of current scholarship and critical debate. Others explore subjects that have only relatively recently become pressing concerns for sustained scholarly interrogation, such as ecology, cross-species interaction, and humoral theory. Some contributions, informed by increasingly sophisticated approaches to the material conditions and embodied experience of theatrical practice, speak to a resurgence of interest in performance, from Shakespeare's period through the first decades of the twenty-first century. Others still investigate distinct sets of plays from unexpected and often polemical angles, noting connections between the comedies under inventive, unpredicted banners such as the theology of adultery, early modern pedagogy, global exploration, or monarchical rule. The Handbook situates these approaches against the long history of criticism and provides a valuable overview of the most up-to-date work in the field.
Author : Ian Calvert
Publisher : Gale, Cengage Learning
Page : 10 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2024-07-01
Category : Study Aids
ISBN : 9781535852333
Gale Researcher Guide for: Shakespearean Comedy is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.
Author : Sarbani Putatunda
Publisher : Atlantic Publishers & Dist
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : English drama (Comedy)
ISBN : 8126906847
According To The Social Historians Of England, After The Economic And Religious Unrest Of The Middle Tudor Period, The Freedom Preached By The Humanists Rejuvenated In A Way The Moral Of The Entire Nation. And Shakespeare Having Chanced Upon The Best Time In Which To Live Had Ample Opportunity To Exercise, With Least Distraction And Most Encouragement, The Highest Faculties Of Man. His Comedies, Therefore, Register Most Comprehensively The Characteristics Of The Congenial Social Atmosphere Of His Time. The Saturnalia Presented In His Comedies Are Not Inimical To The Positive Aspects Of A New Bourgeois Social Set-Up, Which Facilitated The Notions Of Peace And Order. But Inside The Large England, Which Still Retained The Remnants Of Monarchy And/Or Aristocracy, Society Was Afflicted By Many Discordant Elements, Which Shakespeare Never Failed To Notice And Record. As An Assiduous Comic Playwright, He Infused In His Saturnalia The Hints Of Many Social Injustices, The Oppressive Patriarchy (Egeon And His Diktats Against His Daughter For Daring To Choose Her Own Husband In A Midsummer Night S Dream), The Crisis Of Aristocracy (Sir Toby And His Likes), The Degeneration Of Moral Values Leading To An Erosion Of Social Values In A Mercantile Society, And The Historical Retrospection Of The Turbulent Past.The Infusion Though Pronounced In His Early Comedies Is Not Entirely Absent In The Middle Comedies, Which Contain Elements Of Social Realism Behind A Romantic Exterior. The Audience Would Naturally Realize That Both The Early And The Middle Comedies Of Shakespeare Were Interlinked In The Context Of The Social Realism Of The Elizabethan Period. The Delicate Relationship Of Oberon And Titania In A Midsummer Night S Dream, For Instance, Represent A Different Version Of Matrimony Throughout Causing The Reader To Question The Validity Of The Institution. Likewise In The Taming Of The Shrew One Is At A Loss At The End Of The Play When Kate Appears To Be More Subservient Than Either Her Sister Or The Widow. Has Marriage Actually Tamed Her Or Has She Relinquished Her Past Misdemeanours Willingly Because She Has Fallen In Love With Petruchio? The World In Twelfth Night Is Also Clearly Demarcated Into Two Classes The Landowning Wealthy Aristocrats And The Titular Aristocrats Whom Lawrence Classifies As The Declassed Aristocrats . The Historical Retrospection Of The Past Is Made Clearer At This Apparently Incongruent Point, Than In All Other Romantic Comedies. The Book Would Definitely Prove Valuable To Students And Teachers Concerned With Shakespearean Works.
Author : Cesar Lombardi Barber
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780691149523
In this classic work, acclaimed Shakespeare critic C. L. Barber argues that Elizabethan seasonal festivals such as May Day and Twelfth Night are the key to understanding Shakespeare's comedies. Brilliantly interweaving anthropology, social history, and literary criticism, Barber traces the inward journey--psychological, bodily, spiritual--of the comedies: from confusion, raucous laughter, aching desire, and aggression, to harmony. Revealing the interplay between social custom and dramatic form, the book shows how the Elizabethan antithesis between everyday and holiday comes to life in the comedies' combination of seriousness and levity. "I have been led into an exploration of the way the social form of Elizabethan holidays contributed to the dramatic form of festive comedy. To relate this drama to holiday has proved to be the most effective way to describe its character. And this historical interplay between social and artistic form has an interest of its own: we can see here, with more clarity of outline and detail than is usually possible, how art develops underlying configurations in the social life of a culture."--C. L. Barber, in the Introduction This new edition includes a foreword by Stephen Greenblatt, who discusses Barber's influence on later scholars and the recent critical disagreements that Barber has inspired, showing that Shakespeare's Festive Comedy is as vital today as when it was originally published.
Author : Melissa Emerson Walter
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781487503642
This is the first book to provide a full treatment of Shakespeare's literary and theatrical engagement with the Italian novella and female agency.
Author : Derek Gottlieb
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2015-08-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317509073
This book recovers a sense of the high stakes of Shakespearean comedy, arguing that the comedies, no less than the tragedies, serve to dramatize responses to the condition of being human, responses that invite scholarly investigation and explanation. Taking its cue from Stanley Cavell’s influential readings of Othello and Lear, the book argues that exposure or vulnerability to others is the source of both human happiness and human misery; while the tragedies showcase attempts at the evasion of such vulnerability through the self-defeating pursuit of epistemological certainty, the comedies present the drama and the difficulty of turning away from an epistemological register in order to productively respond to the fact of our humanity. Where Shakespeare’s tragedies might be viewed in Cavellian terms as the drama of skepticism, Shakespeare’s comedies then exemplify the drama of acknowledgement. As a parallel and a preamble, Gottlieb suggests that the field of literary studies is itself a site of such revealing responses: where competing research methods strive to foreclose upon (or, alternatively, rejoice in) epistemological uncertainty, such commitments bespeak an urge to avoid or circumvent the human in the practice of scholarship. Reading Shakespeare’s comedies in tandem with a "defactoist" view of teaching and learning points in the direction of a new humanism, one that eschews both the relativism of old deconstruction and contemporary Presentism and the determinism of various kinds of structural accounts. This book offers something new in scholarly and popular understanding of Shakespeare’s work, doing so with both philosophical rigor and literary attention to the difficult work of reading.
Author : Camille Wells Slights
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 1993-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0802029248
Challenging the traditional view that Shakespeare's early comedies are about the experience of romantic love and constitute a genre called romantic comedy, Camille Wells Slights demonstrates that they dramatize individual action in the context of social dynamics, reflecting and commenting on the culture in which they originated. Shakespeare's Comic Commonwealths sheds new light on ten Shakespearean comedies: The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labor's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. In a diversity of comic forms - from rollicking farce to tragicomedy - these plays offer varying perspectives on the forces that make and mar human communities. Dramatizing tensions between savagery and civilization, autonomy and dependence, and isolation and community, Shakespeare's comedies both reflect and comment on the society that produces them. Slights eschews viewing these comedies as endorsements of the prevailing ideologies of sixteenth-century England or as subversions of that hierarchical, patriarchal culture. They can be most fruitfully understood as imaginative forms that present cultural practices, institutions and beliefs as human constructions susceptible to critical scrutiny. While exposing the injustice and brutality as well as the assurances and satisfactions of social experiences, Shakespeare's comedies represent people as inescapably social beings. By combining historical scholarship with formal analysis and incorporating insights from social anthropology and feminist theory, Shakespeare's Comic Commonwealths offers new readings of Shakespeare's early comedies and analyses the interaction between the plays and the social structures and processes of early modern England.
Author : H. B. Charlton
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0415352673
First published in 1938. This is a survey of Shakepeare's comedies which illustrates the playwright's increasing grasp on the art and idea of comedy. Themes, characters and plays covered include: Romanticism in Shakespearian comedy; Shakespeare's Jew, Falstaff, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Dark Comedies.
Author : Penny Gay
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2008-04-07
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781139469777
Why did theatre audiences laugh in Shakespeare's day? Why do they still laugh now? What did Shakespeare do with the conventions of comedy that he inherited, so that his plays continue to amuse and move audiences? What do his comedies have to say about love, sex, gender, power, family, community, and class? What place have pain, cruelty, and even death in a comedy? Why all those puns? In a survey that travels from Shakespeare's earliest experiments in farce and courtly love-stories to the great romantic comedies of his middle years and the mould-breaking experiments of his last decade's work, this book addresses these vital questions. Organised thematically, and covering all Shakespeare's comedies from the beginning to the end of his career, it provides readers with a map of the playwright's comic styles, showing how he built on comedic conventions as he further enriched the possibilities of the genre.