The Major Authors Ninth Edition provides new selections and visual and media support, plus a new, free Supplemental Ebook. Firmly grounded by the hallmark strengths of all Norton Anthologies, and with the apparatus you trust, The Norton Anthology of English Literature sets the standard and remains an unmatched value.
Read by millions of students over seven editions, The Norton Anthology of English Literature remains the most trusted undergraduate survey of English literature available and one of the most successful college texts ever published.
This two-volume work provides some of the most anthologized material in English literature, with one difference: a number of those works are presented in their entirety to expose students to a much more comprehensive reading experience. For those who have read only simple snippets of short pieces or parts of works, these complete poems, works of drama, and prose fiction will help them to expand the depth of their reading. From Beowulf to Swift, this anthology promises to introduce a wider range of material for the reader's enjoyment. The selections are broad enough for those students who wish to explore--in some detail--the world of the writers' imagination. Included are brief author or work headnotes to aid the reader in capturing the backdrop to the authors and their works.
Shakespeare lived in a world of absolutes—of claims for the absolute authority of scripture, monarch, and God, and the authority of fathers over wives and children, the old over the young, and the gentle over the baseborn. With the elegance and verve for which he is well known, Stephen Greenblatt, author of the best-selling Will in the World, shows that Shakespeare was strikingly averse to such absolutes and constantly probed the possibility of freedom from them. Again and again, Shakespeare confounds the designs and pretensions of kings, generals, and churchmen. His aversion to absolutes even leads him to probe the exalted and seemingly limitless passions of his lovers. Greenblatt explores this rich theme by addressing four of Shakespeare’s preoccupations across all the genres in which he worked. He first considers the idea of beauty in Shakespeare’s works, specifically his challenge to the cult of featureless perfection and his interest in distinguishing marks. He then turns to Shakespeare’s interest in murderous hatred, most famously embodied in Shylock but seen also in the character Bernardine in Measure for Measure. Next Greenblatt considers the idea of Shakespearean authority—that is, Shakespeare’s deep sense of the ethical ambiguity of power, including his own. Ultimately, Greenblatt takes up Shakespearean autonomy, in particular the freedom of artists, guided by distinctive forms of perception, to live by their own laws and to claim that their creations are singularly unconstrained. A book that could only have been written by Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare’s Freedom is a wholly original and eloquent meditation by the most acclaimed and influential Shakespearean of our time.