English Drama 1586-1642
The Age of Shakespeare
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:12th Jun '97
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The final volume in the Oxford History of English Literature Series
Shakespeare is usually set apart from his contemporaries, in kind no less than quality. This book sees Elizabethan drama as drawn together by a shared need to deal with contradictory pressures from heterogeneous audiences, censorious authorities, profit driven managers, and authors looking for classic status and social esteem.Shakespeare is usually set apart from his contemporaries, in kind no less than quality. This book sees Elizabethan drama as drawn together by a shared need to deal with contradictory pressures from heterogeneous audiences, censorious authorities, profit driven managers, and authors looking for classic status and social esteem. The power of poetry gives these contradictory purposes an intensity and scope that speaks directly to our own motives, aspirations, and evasions. But this connection must be shallow if we do not face the strangeness as well as the accessibility of this repertory. Starting from texts rather than systems, experience rather than explanation, Hunter argues that only by treating the unfamiliar and even the distasteful with equal seriousness can we allow the familiar in Shakespeare its historical separateness as well as its imaginative intimacy.
It makes a huge contribution...In a clear, attractive style, free from jargon, Hunter tells the story of a protean art. * Va Quart *
impressive, considering the sheer mass of material to be mastered ... a complex and rich work which invites discussion and admiration. * Gunther Walch, Shakespeare Jahrbuch Band 135/1999 *
Hunter's strategy is very clever ... this latest volume of literary history does indeed serve a purpose. It redirects attention to a wide range of plays that are ignored in most critical writings ... It provides a ready reference handbook of information about plays. It throws all kinds of interesting sidelights on the plays of Shakespeare. In addition, the book maintains a strong narrative flow and is full of the kind of pithy comments that provide topics for papers and challenges for dissertations, so it should be of great use to undergraduate students and teachers. I suspect is will continue to be consulted long after much currently fashionable criticism has been displaced. * R. A. Foakes, Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol 50, no 2, summer 1999 *
Hunter's study was a long time in the making, and it represents the mature reflections of a distinguished scholar and critic ... His discussion is unhurried, and he quotes long passages which are then subject to elaborate stylistic analysis ... Hunter's comments are forceful and original * Maurice Charney, Renaissance Quarterly *
His contribution is immensely informative and eloquently written * Richard McCabe, Theatre Research International Vol 24 No 2 *
ISBN: 9780198122135
Dimensions: 224mm x 147mm x 39mm
Weight: 937g
640 pages