This Companion represents the myriad ways of thinking about the remarkable achievement of Shakespeare’s sonnets. An authoritative reference guide and extended introduction to Shakespeare’s sonnets. Contains more than 20 newly-commissioned essays by both established and younger scholars. Considers the form, sequence, content, literary context, editing and printing of the sonnets. Shows how the sonnets provide a mirror in which cultures can read their own critical biases. Informed by the latest theoretical, cultural and archival work.
Beginning with the early masters of the sonnet form, Dante and Petrarch, the Companion examines the reinvention of the sonnet across times and cultures, from Europe to America. In doing so, it considers sonnets as diverse as those by William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, George Herbert and e. e. cummings. The chapters explore how we think of the sonnet as a 'lyric' and what is involved in actually trying to write one. The book includes a lively discussion between three distinguished contemporary poets - Paul Muldoon, Jeff Hilson and Meg Tyler - on the experience of writing a sonnet, and a chapter which traces the sonnet's diffusion across manuscript, print, screen and the internet. A fresh and authoritative overview of this major poetic form, the Companion expertly guides the reader through the sonnet's history and development into the global multimedia phenomenon it is today.
This Companion provides a full introduction to the poetry of William Shakespeare through discussion of his freestanding narrative poems, the Sonnets, and his plays. Fourteen leading international scholars provide accessible and authoritative chapters on all relevant topics: from Shakespeare's seminal role in the development of English poetry, the wide-ranging practice of his poetic form, and his enigmatic place in print and manuscript culture, to his immersion in English Renaissance politics, religion, classicism, and gender dynamics. With individual chapters on Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Passionate Pilgrim, 'The Phoenix and the Turtle', the Sonnets, and A Lover's Complaint, the Companion also includes chapters on the presence of poetry in the dramatic works, on the relation between poetry and performance, and on the reception and influence of the poems. The volume includes a chronology of Shakespeare's life, a note on reference works, and a reading list for each chapter.
The sonnets are among the most accomplished and fascinating poems in the English language. They are central to an understanding of Shakespeare's work as a poet and poetic dramatist, and while their autobiographical relevance is uncertain, no account of Shakespeare's life can afford to ignore them. So many myths and superstitions have arisen around these poems, relating for example to their possible addressees, to their coherence as a sequence, to their dates of composition, to their relation to other poetry of the period and to Shakespeare's plays, that even the most naïve reader will find it difficult to read them with an innocent mind. Shakespeare's Sonnets dispels the myths and focuses on the poems. Considering different possible ways of reading the Sonnets, Wells and Edmondson place them in a variety of literary and dramatic contexts--in relation to other poetry of the period, to Shakespeare's plays, as poems for performance, and in relation to their reception and reputation. Selected sonnets are discussed in depth, but the book avoids the jargon of theoretical criticism. Shakespeare's Sonnets is an exciting contribution to the Oxford Shakespeare Topics, ideal for students and the general reader interested in these intriguing poems.
Intended for all readers, an exciting, innovative approach to Shakespeare's Sonnets."His sugared Sonnets among his private friends." That's how Shakespeare's Sonnets were described in the only contemporary reference to them. This brings up the image of a talented, young poet-with a penchant for irreverent fun-getting together with friends to read his new sonnet cycle. Numerous sonnet cycles were published that typically told the story of thwarted love. The same topics are repeated: a chaste and beautiful lady, a love-sick poet dreaming only of his beloved, sunk into despair by her cruelty (cruel only because she decides to remain chaste). Shakespeare's Sonnets are like this, but with a twist-adding a love triangle that turning convention upside down. Working out all the possibilities of this intriguing story as the sonnets progress is all part of the fun.Atkins invites you to imagine that you are among the friends our poet has allowed to see his new sonnets. You'll read the poems and the discussion of each one, trying to figure out the story. See what it might have been like to read Shakespeare's Sonnets "among his private friends."This book, complete with glosses of difficult words and phrases and a thorough explanation of each poem, is as carefully edited as the acclaimed variorum edition published by Atkins in 2007, Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. It has the same sensitive readings of verse that made his variorum edition unique. (For those particularly interested in Shakespeare's use of meter, Atkins has made a complete metrical analysis of all 154 poems, which serves as an excellent companion to Shakespeare's Sonnets Among His Private Friends. It is available free at amonghisprivatefriends.com.) Also unique to this edition is a look at how the last 28 sonnets about a "dark lady" may have been influenced by Christopher Marlowe's English translation of Ovid's erotic poems, Amores (Book 1 of which is included in an appendix).294 pages including appendix, bibliography and index
The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. This is the explicitly political approach taken in the dynamic and newly updated edition of A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. Provides the definitive feminist statement on Shakespeare for the 21st century Updates address some of the newest theatrical andcreative engagements with Shakespeare, offering fresh insights into Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and gender dynamics in early modern England Contributors come from across the feminist generations and from various stages in their careers to address what is new in the field in terms of historical and textual discovery Explores issues vital to feminist inquiry, including race, sexuality, the body, queer politics, social economies, religion, and capitalism In addition to highlighting changes, it draws attention to the strong continuities of scholarship in this field over the course of the history of feminist criticism of Shakespeare The previous edition was a recipient of a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award; this second edition maintains its coverage and range, and bringsthe scholarship right up to the present day
This introduction provides a concise overview of the central issues and critical responses to Shakespeare’s sonnets, looking at the themes, images, and structure of his work, as well as the social and historical circumstances surrounding their creation. Explores the biographical mystery of the identities of the characters addressed. Examines the intangible aspects of each sonnet, such as eroticism and imagination. A helpful appendix offers a summary of each poem with descriptions of key literary figures.
'This Complete Sonnets and Poems is a distinguished addition to a distinguished series. It will repay continuing study, and act as a valuable point of reference for readers concerned more generally with Shakespeare's art and language. Colin Burrow's good sense, tact and balance as aneditor are deeply impressive.' -H. R. Woudhuysen, Times Literary SupplementThis is the only fully annotated and modernized edition to bring together Shakespeare's Sonnets as well as all his poems (including those attributed to him after his death). A full introduction discusses his development as a poet, and how the poems relate to his plays; detailed notes explain the language and allusions in clear modern English. While accessibly written, the edition takes account of the most recent scholarship and criticism.
This four-volume Companion to Shakespeare's Works, compiled as a single entity, offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism. Brings together new essays from a mixture of younger and more established scholars from around the world - Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Examines each of Shakespeare’s plays and major poems, using all the resources of contemporary criticism, from performance studies to feminist, historicist, and textual analysis. Volumes are organized in relation to generic categories: namely the histories, the tragedies, the romantic comedies, and the late plays, problem plays and poems. Each volume contains individual essays on all texts in the relevant category, as well as more general essays looking at critical issues and approaches more widely relevant to the genre. Offers a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies at the dawning of the twenty-first century. This companion to Shakespeare’s histories contains original essays on every history play from Henry VI to Henry V as well as fourteen additional articles on such topics as censorship in Shakespeare’s histories, the relation of Shakespeare’s plays to other dramatic histories of the period, Shakespeare’s histories on film, the homoerotics of Shakespeare’s history plays, and nation formation in Shakespeare’s histories.
In the same winning formula as The New Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie (more than 300,000 copies sold) and The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Sherlock Holmes (1999), this all-new companion to Shakespeare will present The Bard in a new and exciting way in a new century. For students, scholars, theater lovers, and scholars - nearly everyone! - this book wraps some 400 years of Bardology into a lively and often unexpected package.In their witty and inimitable way, Dick Riley and Pam McAllister examine the whole dramatic canon, play by play, including dramas of disputed authorship. (The long poems and sonnets are also covered.) Included are inside stories on theater and film productions, "alternate" interpretations of the plays, Shakespeare's status around the world, the clubs and societies, the mysterious life - and even the question that has plagued critics almost from the day he put down his quill: whether Shakespeare even wrote the works attributed to him.
