Shakespeare: Poet and Citizen

ISBN-13: 9781783606719 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 280 str.

Victor Kiernan

Opis

With Shakespeare: Poet and Citizen, Kiernan displays how profoundly sensitive Shakespeare was to the massive social and political upheavals of his age. During the playwright s lifetime, he saw the first challenges to monarchical rule, as well as serious transformations in England s social hierarchy. Shakespeare witnessed and capitalized on these events, using major social changes, such as rebellious new female roles, prominently in his comedies, which feature identity confusion, gender bending, and cross-dressing. His historical plays, similarly, reflect the demise of feudal allegiances and the development of the modern state. By placing these plays within the context of England s emerging modernity, Kiernan brilliantly upends our conventional perceptions of Shakespeare s work.
"

Recenzje

'Victor Kiernan is one of the best historians of seventeenth-century England. And he is also a sensitive literary critic. The combination of these gifts makes his book a remarkable achievement. It will become a classic.'
Christopher Hill

'The strength of this book lies in the total view of political and social conditions of the period which underpins it ... Unlike so many other books on Shakespeare ... it will not scare off the non-academic reader.'
The Guardian

'This book rests on a lifetime's thinking about history. It helps us see Shakespeare in "a more realistic light".'
Times Literary Supplement

'[Kiernan's] detailed knowledge of the plays and the period they emerged from give an enormous authority to his analysis of the forces at work in them. He covers the entire canon, including the sonnets and the comedies but his analysis of the histories is central.'
Morning Star

'[A] splendid Marxist exploration of Shakespeare's work...Victor Kiernan was a historian to rank with Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill. His approach to Shakespeare is based on a deep historical understanding of the contradictions of the period, which makes him deeply sensitive to what the plays reveal.'
International Socialism Journal

Spis treści

Introduction by Michael Wood Foreword Part I: A Time Out of Joint 1. Late Tudor England 2. Society and Art 3. Shakespeare's Life 4. Shakespeare and the Theatre Part II: The Histories 1. Shakespeare and English History 2. The Plays 3. Historical Themes Part III: Experiments 1. Tragedies 2. Poems 3. Sonnets Part IV: The Comedies 1. The Comic Realm 2. The Plays 3. Comedy Themes Part V: Life Unfolding 1. Chance and Destiny, Fate and Accident 2. Towards the Tragic

O autorze

Kiernan, Victor
Victor Kiernan (1913-2009) ranks among Britain's most distinguished historians. After a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a long period spent teaching in India, he joined the History Department at the University of Edinburgh, where he served as professor of modern history from 1970 until his retirement. Over the course of his life he authored such works as European Empires from Conquest to Collapse; The Duel in European History; Shakespeare: Poet and Citizen; Horace: Poetics and Politics and numerous others, as well as translating two volumes of Urdu poetry.