'Now I am alone,' says Hamlet before speaking a soliloquy. But what is a Shakespearean soliloquy? How has it been understood in literary and theatrical history? How does it work in screen versions of Shakespeare? What influence has it had? Neil Corcoran offers a thorough exploration and explanation of the origin, nature, development and reception of Shakespeare's soliloquies. Divided into four parts, the book supplies the historical, dramatic and theoretical contexts necessary to understanding, offers extensive and insightful close readings of particular soliloquies and includes interviews with eight renowned Shakespearean actors providing details of the practical performance of the soliloquy. A comprehensive study of a key aspect of Shakespeare's dramatic art, this book is ideal for students and theatre-goers keen to understand the complexities and rewards of Shakespeare's unique use of the soliloquy.
Essays, Paradoxes, Soliloquies is a new selection of Unamuno's essays from across two previously published collections, 1925's Essays and Soliloquies, translated by J. E. Crawford Flitch, and 1945's Perplexities and Paradoxes, translated by Stuart Gross. Here Unamuno forcefully and eloquently expresses his beliefs about religion, ethics, philosophy, and Spanish literature."What remain today are the argumentative Essays, perhaps the most living and enduring of all he wrote[.]" - Jorge Luis Borges
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies is a work by George Santayana. The author was a philosopher, essayist, and poet, here presenting his monologues that are to be addressed to oneself, also known as soliloquies.
Twenty-seven soliloquies are examined in this work, illustrating how the spectator or reader is led to the soliloquy and how the drama is continued afterwards.
Spirited and insightful essays from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Memories of a Catholic Girlhood and a “delightfully polished writer” (The Atlantic Monthly). Whether penning criticism, memoir, or fiction, the New York Times–bestselling author of The Group invariably wrote with “an icily honest eye and a glacial wit” (The New York Times). Gathered here are three collections of her personal essays and literary criticism. Occasional Prose: McCarthy imbues this collection with her unique gifts of clear-eyed observation, sharp insight, and heartfelt passion as she gives us the story of La Traviata in her own words, reviews a charming and practical book on gardening, revisits Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and eulogizes friends, including Hannah Arendt. “Bracing opinions tartly expressed . . . May she continue to call us all to attention . . . showing us the world of her imagination, thought and rich experience.” —The New York Times The Writing on the Wall: With engaging and thought-provoking essays on Madame Bovary, Macbeth, Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, William S. Burroughs, J. D. Salinger, and Hannah Arendt, this collection of literary reactions is distinguished by McCarthy’s savage intelligence, clarity of thought, and utter lack of pretension. “The brand name tells all. Potential readers do not have to be informed by me of the excellence of this volume—the acumen, intelligence, clarity, wit and lack of bitchiness.” —Anthony Burgess, The New York Times Ideas and the Novel: In this lively, erudite book, McCarthy throws down the gauntlet: Why did the nineteenth century produce novels of ideas while the twentieth century is so lacking in serious fiction? Could Henry James be a big part of the problem? With verve and passion, McCarthy provides a critique of how the novel has evolved—or not—in the last century. “[McCarthy’s] writing is spirited. [Her] musings serve a larger purpose, make a grander statement, or rather, indictment. She means to set the modern novel apart.” —The Harvard Crimson
Award-winning essayist Lance Morrow writes about the partnership of God and Mammon in the New World—about the ways in which Americans have made money and lost money, and about how they have thought and obsessed about this peculiarly American subject. Fascinated by the tracings of theology in the ways of American money Morrow sees a reconciliation of God and Mammon in the working out of the American Dream. This sharp-eyed essay reflects upon American money in a series of individual life stories, including his own. Morrow writes about what he calls “the emotions of money,” which he follows from the catastrophe of the Great Depression to the era of Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Donald Trump. He considers money’s dual character—functioning both as a hard, substantial reality and as a highly subjective force and shape-shifter, a sort of dream. Is money the root of all evil? Or is it the source of much good? Americans have struggled with the problem of how to square the country’s money and power with its aspiration to virtue. Morrow pursues these themes as they unfold in the lives of Americans both famous and obscure: Here is Thomas Jefferson, the luminous Founder who died broke, his fortune in ruin, his estate and slaves at Monticello to be sold to pay his debts. Here are the Brown brothers of Providence, Rhode Island, members of the family that founded Brown University. John Brown was in the slave trade, while his brother Moses was an ardent abolitionist. With race in America a powerful subtheme throughout the book, Morrow considers Booker T. Washington, who, with a cunning that sometimes went unappreciated among his own people, recognized money as the key to full American citizenship. God and Mammon is a masterly weaving of America’s money myths, from the nation’s beginnings to the present.
