Download Free Shakespeares History Plays Rethinking Historicism Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Shakespeares History Plays Rethinking Historicism and write the review.

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
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.
Shakespeare's history plays make up nearly a third of his corpus and feature iconic characters like Falstaff, the young Prince Hal, and Richard III--as well as unforgettable scenes like the storming of Harfleur. But these plays also present challenges for teachers, who need to help students understand shifting dynastic feuds, manifold concepts of political power, and early modern ideas of the body politic, kingship, and nationhood. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," introduces instructors to the many editions of the plays, the wealth of contextual and critical writings available, and other resources. Part 2, "Approaches," contains essays on topics as various as masculinity and gender, using the plays in the composition classroom, and teaching the plays through Shakespeare's own sources, film, television, and the Web. The essays help instructors teach works that are poetically and emotionally rich as well as fascinating in how they depict Shakespeare's vision of his nation's past and present.
During the early modern period, the publication process decisively shaped the history play and its reception. Bringing together the methodologies of genre criticism and book history, this study argues that stationers have – through acts of selection and presentation – constructed some remarkably influential expectations and ideas surrounding genre. Amy Lidster boldly challenges the uncritical use of Shakespeare's Folio as a touchstone for the history play, exposing the harmful ways in which this has solidified its parameters as a genre exclusively interested in the lives of English kings. Reframing the Folio as a single example of participation in genre-making, this book illuminates the exciting and diverse range of historical pasts that were available to readers and audiences in the early modern period. Lidster invites us to reappraise the connection between plays on stage and in print, and to reposition playbooks within the historical culture and geopolitics of the book trade.
Hailey Bachrach reveals how Shakespeare used female characters in deliberate and consistent ways across his history plays. Illuminating these patterns, she helps us understand these characters not as incidental or marginal presences, but as a key lens through which to understand Shakespeare's process for transforming history into drama. Shakespeare uses female characters to draw deliberate attention to the blurry line between history and fiction onstage, bringing to life the constrained but complex position of women not only in the past itself, but as characters in depictions of said past. In Shakespeare's historical landscape, female characters represent the impossibility of fully recovering voices the record has excluded, and the empowering potential of standing outside history that Shakespeare can only envision by drawing upon the theatre's material conditions. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Gale Researcher Guide for: Shakespearean History 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.
In the 30 years since the publication of Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning overthrew traditional modes of Shakespeare criticism, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have rapidly become the dominant modes for studying and writing about the Bard. This comprehensive guide introduces students to the key writers, texts and ideas of contemporary Shakespeare criticism and alternatives to new historicist and cultural materialist approaches suggested by a range of dissenters including evolutionary critics, historical formalists and advocates of 'the new aestheticism', and the more politically active presentists. Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory covers such topics as: - The key theoretical influences on new historicism including Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. - The major critics, from Stephen Greenblatt to Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield. - Dissenting views from traditional critics and contemporary theorists. Chapter summaries and questions for discussion throughout encourage students to critically engage with contemporary Shakespeare theory for themselves. The book includes a 'Who's Who' of major critics, a timeline of key publications and a glossary of essential critical terms to give students and teachers easy access to essential information.
What is (a) play? How do Shakespeare's plays engage with and represent early modern modes of play – from jests and games to music, spectacle, movement, animal-baiting and dance? How have we played with Shakespeare in the centuries since? And how does the structure of the plays experienced in the early modern playhouse shape our understanding of Shakespeare plays today? Shakespeare / Play brings together established and emerging scholars to respond to these questions, using approaches spanning theatre and dance history, cultural history, critical race studies, performance studies, disability studies, archaeology, affect studies, music history, material history and literary and dramaturgical analysis. Ranging across Shakespeare's dramatic oeuvre as well as early modern lost plays, dance notation, conduct books, jest books and contemporary theatre and film, it includes consideration of Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear and The Merry Wives of Windsor, among others. The subject of this volume is reflected in its structure: Shakespeare / Play features substantial new essays across 5 'acts', interwoven with 7 shorter, playful pieces (a 'prologue', 4 'act breaks', a 'jig' and a 'curtain call'), to offer new directions for research on Shakespearean playing, playmaking and performance. In so doing, this volume interrogates the conceptions of playing of/in Shakespeare that shape how we perform, read, teach and analyze Shakespeare today.
Revised throughout, the book includes: a new introduction which focuses attention on what is specific to literature's treatment of the human (as epitomised by Shakespeare); a section drawing on new work on literary genres as different forms of engagement
This new Complete Works marks the completion of the Arden Shakespeare Third Series and includes all of Shakespeare's plays, poems and sonnets, edited by leading international scholars. New to this edition are the 'apocryphal' plays, part-written by Shakespeare: Double Falsehood, Sir Thomas More and King Edward III. The anthology is unique in giving all three extant texts of Hamlet from Shakespeare's time: the first and second Quarto texts of 1603 and 1604-5, and the first Folio text of 1623. With a simple alphabetical arrangement the Complete Works are easy to navigate. The lengthy introductions and footnotes of the individual Third Series volumes have been removed to make way for a general introduction, short individual introductions to each text, a glossary and a bibliography instead, to ensure all works are accessible in one single volume. This handsome Complete Works is ideal for readers keen to explore Shakespeare's work and for anyone building their literary library.