Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream

ISBN-13: 9780230238787 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 192 str.

Nicolas Tredell

Opis

A stimulating and comprehensive critical survey of the responses to A Midsummer Night's Dream, as well as the key debates and developments, from the seventeenth century to the present day. Leading the reader through material chronologically, the Guide explores the main themes and interpretations and draws on a rich range of critical writings.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements Notes on the Text Introduction 1662-1898: Labyrinth of Enchantment 1900-49: Quest for Constancy The 1950s: Concord from Discord The 1960s: Order and Outrage The 1970s: Tongs and Bones The 1980s: Shattering the Dream The 1990s: Sifting the Fragments The 2000s: Refiguring the Maze Dream on Screen Conclusion Notes Select Bibliography Select Filmography Index.

O autorze

NICOLAS TREDELL is Consultant Editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Readers' Guides series and has produced a number of Guides for the series. He has published widely on literary criticism and theory – his previous publications include: The Critical Decade (1993), Conversations with Critics (1994) and a history of film theory, Cinemas of the Mind (2002). For many years he has taught and convened Sussex University literature courses, most recently on Shakespeare.

Blurb

A Midsummer Night's Dream is an enchanting and extraordinary comedy. With its rich poetry and vigorous prose, and its combination of magic, myth, romance and humour, it ranks among Shakespeare's most popular and memorable plays. However, it has also increasingly been recognized as a profound and penetrating exploration of love, desire, gender, social hierarchy, dramatic art, imagination and vision.

In this Reader's Guide, Nicolas Tredell:

• explores the key critical responses to the play, from the late seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries
• provides succinct and searching accounts of the most vibrant commentaries and interpretations
• sets these accounts in their critical, theoretical and historical contexts.

Informed and incisive, this survey is an invaluable resource for students, teachers and all those who wish to enhance their grasp of Dream criticism and engage in the ongoing critical debates about the play.