Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners: Digesting the New Social History

ISBN-13: 9780198806899 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 288 str.

Chris Fitter

Opis

Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners is a highly original contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare's plays. It breaks important new ground in introducing readers, lay and scholarly alike, to the existence and character of the political culture of the mass of ordinary commoners in Shakespeare's England, as revealed by the recent findings of 'the new social history'. The volume thereby helps to challenge the traditional myths of a non-political commons and a culture of obedience. It also brings together leading Shakespeareans, who digest recent social history, with eminent early modern social historians, who turn their focus on Shakespeare.
This genuinely cross-disciplinary approach generates fresh readings of over ten of Shakespeare's plays and locates the impress on Shakespearean drama of popular political thought and pressure in this period of perceived crisis. The volume is unique in engaging and digesting the dramatic importance of the discoveries of the new social history, thereby resituating and revaluing Shakespeare within the social depth of politics.

Recenzje

[Annabel] Patterson contributes a lively afterword to this excellent collection that reopens some of the questions posed by her work ... Chris Fitter makes a compelling case that this represents a neglected opportunity ... and provides a valuable overview of the key conclusions reached by a generation of social historians. A new understanding of politics as involving continuous interaction between commoners and elites has been one of the signal achievements of this continuing historical research ... as the editor concludes, 'The politically thinkable in Shakespeare's England traversed an astoundingly wide discursive spectrum' ... This collection demonstrates how dialogue between historians and literary critics can be convened ... and the approaches of social history inspire new critical readings.

O autorze

Chris Fitter is Professor of English at Rutgers University. He gained his PhD from St. John's College, University of Oxford and has taught at Wroxton College and the University of Mississippi. His leading interests are in literature and the natural world, the politics of Shakespearean drama, and representations of poverty in Western literature.