Shakespeare's Romances

'This volume brings together some of the best work of recent years on the so-called romances. Its editor, who is herself the author of a ground-breaking study of perspective in Shakespeare, prefaces the collection with a shrewd essay on the complexities of romance as a genre. Her essay and its survey of the critical field afford one of the most perceptive introductions to the topic so far. Like the best of her contributors, Thorne strikes a fine balance between theory and more traditional approaches to the field. An excellent collection and well worth owning.' - Professor R Weis, University College, University of London

New Casebook offers a selection of the most lively and innovative contemporary criticism on the four late plays commonly known as Shakespeare's 'Romances': Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.New Casebook offers a selection of the most lively and innovative contemporary criticism on the four late plays commonly known as Shakespeare's 'Romances': Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. New historicist, Marxist, feminist and psychoanalytic perspectives are all represented, alongside other readings that engage with less familiar issues such as nationalism, topography, religious politics and medico-moral discourse. Alison Thorne's introduction explores the much discussed question of how these plays should be classified generically, and traces the recurrence of certain preconceptions and critical stances in the reception of the Romances from the seventeenth century onwards.