Rethinking Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton

Rethinking Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton PDF

Author: Ann Baynes Coiro

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781139889438

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"Reading literary texts in their historical contexts has been the dominant form of interpretation in literary criticism for the past thirty years. This collection of essays reflects on the origins of historicism and its present usefulness as a mode of literary analysis, its limitations, and its future. The volume provides a brief history of the practice from its renaissance origins, offering examples of historicist work that not only demonstrate the continuing vitality of this methodology but also suggest new directions for research. Focusing on the major figures of Shakespeare and Milton, these essays provide important and concise representations of trends in the field. Designed for scholars and students of early modern English literature (1500-1700), the volume will also be of interest to students of literature more generally and to historians"--

Rethinking Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton

Rethinking Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton PDF

Author: Ann Baynes Coiro

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-10-22

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1107027519

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume explores the history and practice of historicism and its present usefulness for literary criticism, its limitations and its future.

Shakespeare's History Plays

Shakespeare's History Plays PDF

Author: Neema Parvini

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2017-11-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 147442354X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Shakespeare's History Plays boldly moves criticism of Shakespeare's history plays beyond anti-humanist theoretical approaches. This important intervention in the critical and theoretical discourse of Shakespeare studies summarises, evaluates and ultimately calls time on the mode of criticism that has prevailed in Shakespeare studies over the past thirty years. It heralds a new, more dynamic way of reading Shakespeare as a supremely intelligent and creative political thinker, whose history plays address and illuminate the very questions with which cultural historicists have been so preoccupied since the 1980s. In providing bold and original readings of the first and second tetralogies (Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II and Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2), the book reignites old debates and re-energises recent bids to humanise Shakespeare and to restore agency to the individual in the critical readings of his plays

Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory

Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory PDF

Author: Neema Parvini

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-01-26

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 147424100X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Over the past three decades, no critical movement has been more prominent in Shakespeare Studies than new historicism. And yet, it remains notoriously difficult to pin down, define and explain, let alone analyze. Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory provides a comprehensive scholarly analysis of new historicism as a development in Shakespeare studies while asking fundamental questions about its status as literary theory and its continued usefulness as a method of approaching Shakespeare's plays.

Milton Across Borders and Media

Milton Across Borders and Media PDF

Author: Islam Issa

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-02-28

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0192844741

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This edited volume explores the combination of cultural phenomena that have established and canonized the work of John Milton in a global context, from interlingual translations to representations of Milton's work in verbal media, painting, stained glass, dance, opera, and symphony.

Shakespeare's Political Imagination

Shakespeare's Political Imagination PDF

Author: Philip Goldfarb Styrt

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-11-04

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1350173991

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Shakespeare's Political Imagination argues that to better understand Shakespeare's plays it is essential to look at the historicism of setting: how the places and societies depicted in the plays were understood in the period when they were written. This book offers us new readings of neglected critical moments in key plays, such as Malcolm's final speech in Macbeth and the Duke's inaction in The Merchant of Venice, by investigating early modern views about each setting and demonstrating how the plays navigate between those contemporary perspectives. Divided into three parts, this book explores Shakespeare's historicist use of medieval Britain and Scotland in King John and Macbeth; ancient Rome in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus; and Renaissance Europe through Venice and Vienna in The Merchant of Venice, Othello and Measure for Measure. Philip Goldfarb Styrt argues that settings are a powerful component in Shakespeare's worlds that not only function as physical locations, but are a mechanism through which he communicates the political and social orders of the plays. Reading the plays in light of these social and political contexts reveals Shakespeare's dramatic method: how he used competing cultural narratives about other cultures to situate the action of his plays. These fresh insights encourage us to move away from overly localized or universalized readings of the plays and re-discover hidden moments and meanings that have long been obscured.

Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart English History Plays

Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart English History Plays PDF

Author: Kristin M.S. Bezio

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1317050762

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart English History Plays examines the changing ideological conceptions of sovereignty and their on-stage representations in the public theaters during the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods (1580-1642). The study examines the way in which the early modern stage presented a critical dialogue concerning the nature of sovereignty through the lens of specifically English history, focusing in particular on the presentation and representation of monarchy. It presents the subgenre of the English history play as a specific reaction to the surrounding political context capable of engaging with and influencing popular and elite conceptions of monarchy and government. This project is the first of its kind to specifically situate the early modern debate on sovereignty within a 'popular culture' dramatic context; its purpose is not only to provide an historical timeline of English political theory pertaining to monarchy, but to situate the drama as a significant influence on the production and dissemination thereof during the Tudor and Stuart periods. Some of the plays considered here, notably those by Shakespeare and Marlowe, have been extensively and thoroughly studied. But others-such as Edmund Ironside, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and King John and Matilda-have not previously been the focus of much critical attention.

Milton, Drama, and Greek Texts

Milton, Drama, and Greek Texts PDF

Author: Tania Demetriou

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-12-07

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1351341316

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This collection reconsiders Milton’s engagement with Greek texts, with particular attention to the theological and theatrical meanings attached to Greek in the early modern period. Responding to new scholarship on early modern reactions to Greek authors – especially Euripides and Homer, Milton’s particular favourites – the collection emphasizes the associations of Greek with both Protestantism and the origins of tragedy, two arenas frequently in tension, but crucially linked in Milton’s literary imagination. The contributions explore a range of works spanning the whole of Milton’s career, from the early masque Comus, through the political and religious prose, to the 1671 closet drama, Samson Agonistes. They consider the ways in which the authority and controversy attached to Greek authors framed Milton’s approaches to their texts. Looking at both the texts and their interpretative traditions together, this book suggests that Greek authors shaped Milton’s attitudes to drama in ways even more extensive and surprising than we have yet recognized. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Seventeenth Century.

Passionate Playgoing in Early Modern England

Passionate Playgoing in Early Modern England PDF

Author: Allison P. Hobgood

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-01-23

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1107041287

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Passionate Playgoing in Early Modern England examines the emotional effect of stage performance on the minds of the early modern theatre audience.

Milton Now

Milton Now PDF

Author: C. Gray

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-12-16

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1137383100

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

By bringing together Milton specialists with other innovative early modern scholars, the collection aims to embrace and encourage a methodologically adventurous study of Milton's works, analyzing them both in relation to their own moment and their many ensuing contexts.