Shakespeare, Dissent and the Cold War

by Thomas, Alfred

• ISBN13: 9781137438942
• ISBN10: 1137438940
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-08-22
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Shakespeare, Dissent and the Cold War is the first book to read Shakespeare's drama through the lens of Cold War politics. Rather than simply exploring how Shakespeare's plays were appropriated for political purposes in Communist Central and Eastern Europe, the book uses the Cold War experience of dissenting artists in theatre and film to highlight the coded religio-political subtexts in Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and The Winter's Tale.
Combining close readings of these plays with their adaptations by dissenting artists in the twentieth century, the study reveals the deep ideological struggles within Shakespeare's drama and within the playwright himself during a period of state oppression and religious violence.

Author Biography

Alfred Thomas is Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, having previously taught at Rutgers, Harvard and Berkeley, USA. He is the author of seven books, including A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare (2007) and Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory, and the City (2010).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1.Culture and Dissent in Shakespeare's England and Cold War Europe
2.'The Heart of My Mystery:' The Hidden Language of Dissent in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Grigorii Kozintsev's Film Gamlet
3.'A Dog's Obeyed in Office:' Subverting Authority in Shakespeare's King Lear and Grigorii Kozintsev's Film Korol' Lir
4.'Faith, Here's an Equivocator:' Language, Resistance, and the Limits of Authority in Shakespeare's Macbeth and Tom Stoppard's Cahoot's Macbeth
5. 'In Fair Bohemia:' The Politics of Utopia in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Ingeborg Bachmann's 'Bohemia Lies on the Sea'
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index