First published in 1978, this book represents a study of the ways in which Shakespeare exploits the possibilities of metaphor. In a series of studies ranging from the early to the mature Shakespeare, the author concentrates on metaphor as a controlling structure — the extent to which a certain metaphoric idea informs and organises the drama. These studies turn constantly to the relations between symbol and metaphor, literal and figurative, and examine key plays such as Richard III, King John, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Coriolanus. They also provide a key to The Tempest which is analysed in terms of power and possession — the dominant motif.
First published in 1978, this book represents a study of the ways in which Shakespeare exploits the possibilities of metaphor. In a series of studies ranging from the early to the mature Shakespeare, the author concentrates on metaphor as a controlling structure -- the extent to which a certain metaphoric idea informs and organises the drama. These studies turn constantly to the relations between symbol and metaphor, literal and figurative, and examine key plays such as Richard III, King John, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Coriolanus. They also provide a key to The Tempest which is analysed in terms of power and possession -- the dominant motif.
First published in 1990, the aim of this book is to reveal the William Shakespeare whose life has been obscured by centuries of literary mythology. It unravels a series of strands in order to understand the man and the major influences which shaped his life and writing. The first part advances the thesis that his relationship with his father directly influenced the character of Falstaff — helping to not only explain key events in his father’s life but also critical events in his own biography. This thesis not only illuminates the Falstaff plays but also a number of other works such as Hamlet. The second part focuses on Shakespeare’s own life, and includes much original research particularly on the tradition that he was a poacher of deer, discussing the influence this incident had on his later life and writings. In addition, a sociological approach has been used which illuminates a number of key areas, including questioning the view his background was narrow and provincial — which has often been used to dispute his authorship of plays of such cosmopolitan appeal.
First published in 1990, this book argues that any theory of language constructs its ‘object’ by separating ‘relevant’ from ‘irrelevant’ phenomena — excluding the latter. This leaves a ‘remainder’ which consists of the untidy, creative part of how language is used — the essence of poetry and metaphor. Although this remainder can never be completely formalised, it must be fully recognised by any true account of language and thus this book attempts the first ‘theory of the remainder’. As such, whether it is language or the speaker who speaks is dealt with, leading to an analysis of how all speakers are ‘violently’ constrained in their use of language by social and psychological realties.
Shakespeare through Islamic Worlds investigates the peculiar absence of Islam and Muslims from Shakespeare’s canon. While many of Shakespeare’s plays were set in the Mediterranean, a geography occupied by Muslim empires and cultures, his work eschews direct engagement with the religion and its people. This erasure is striking given the popularity of this topic in the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. By exploring the limited ways in which Shakespeare uses Islamic and Muslim tropes and topoi, Ambereen Dadabhoy argues that Islam and Muslim cultures function as an alternate or shadow text in his works, ranging from his staged Mediterranean plays to his histories and comedies. By consigning the diverse cultures of the Islamic regimes that occupied and populated the early modern Mediterranean, Shakespeare constructs a Europe and Mediterranean freed from the presence of non-white, non-European, and non-Christian Others, which belied the reality of the world in which he lived. Focusing on the Muslims at the margins of Shakespeare’s works, Dadabhoy reveals that Islam and its cultures informed the plots, themes, and intellectual investments of Shakespeare’s plays. She puts Islam and Muslims back into the geographies and stories from which Shakespeare had evacuated them. This innovative book will be of interest to all those working on race, religion, global and cultural exchange within Shakespeare, as well as people working on Islamic, Mediterranean, and Asian studies in literature and the early modern period.
First published in 1991, this book is the first annotated bibliography of feminist Shakespeare criticism from 1975 to 1988 — a period that saw a remarkable amount of ground-breaking work. While the primary focus is on feminist studies of Shakespeare, it also includes wide-ranging works on language, desire, role-playing, theatre conventions, marriage, and Elizabethan and Jacobean culture — shedding light on Shakespeare’s views on and representation of women, sex and gender. Accompanying the 439 entries are extensive, informative annotations that strive to maintain the original author’s perspective, supplying a careful and thorough account of the main points of an article.
In both feminist theory and Shakespearean criticism, questions of sexuality have consistently been conflated with questions of gender. First published in 1992, this book details the intersections and contradictions between sexuality and gender in the early modern period. Valerie Traub argues that desire and anxiety together constitute the erotic in Shakespearean drama – circulating throughout the dramatic texts, traversing ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ sites, eliciting and expressing heterosexual and homoerotic fantasies, embodiments, and fears. This is the first book to present a non-normalizing account of the unconscious and the institutional prerogatives that comprise the erotics of Shakespearean drama. Employing feminist, psychoanalytic, and new historical methods, and using each to interrogate the other, the book synthesises the psychic and the social, the individual and the institutional.
First published in 1990, this book presents a discussion with Arthur Miller, in conversation with Christopher Bigsby. Miller talks openly and extensively about his own life and experiences, events and environments which provide material for his plays: his New York childhood, the Depression, the McCarthy witch-hunts. He discusses in depth both the technique of his writing and the moral and political questions which his plays address, and argues passionately for the importance of maintaining respect for human values in a world where they are so frequently transgressed. Interwoven with these conversations are contributions from actors, directors, designers, reviewers, and writers who have encountered Miller over the years – whether in person or through his plays – which attest to the universal and enduring importance of his work.
First published in 1992, this book represents the first major attempt to compile a bibliography of Derrida’s work and scholarship about his work. It attempts to be comprehensive rather than selective, listing primary and secondary works from the year of Derrida’s Master’s thesis in 1954 up until 1991, and is extensively annotated. It arranges under article type a huge number of works from scholars across numerous fields — reflecting the interdisciplinary and controversial nature of Deconstruction. The substantial introduction and annotations also make this bibliography, in part, a critical guide and as such will make a highly useful reference tool for those studying his philosophy.
Aristophanes and Women, first published in 1993, investigates the workings of the great Athenian comedian’s ‘women plays’ in an attempt to discern why they were in fact probably quite funny to their original audiences. It is argued that modern students, scholars, and dramatists need to consider much more closely the conditions of the plays’ ancient productions when evaluating their ostensible themes. Three plays are focused upon: Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, and Ecclesiazusae. All seem to speak quite eloquently to contemporary concerns about women’s rights, the value of women’s work, and the relationships between women and war, literary representation and politics. On the one hand, Professor Taaffe tries to retrieve what an ancient Athenian audience may have l appreciated about these plays and what their central theses may have meant within that culture. On the other hand, Aristophanes is discussed from the perspective of a late twentieth-century, specifically female, reader.
