An Introduction to Shakespeare's Poems

by Hyland, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780333725931
• ISBN10: 033372593X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-18
• Publisher: Red Globe Pr

Summary

While it is widely acknowledged that Shakespeare is the most important poet to have written in English, most people think of his poetry as the verse that is written in his plays. Apart from a few of the Sonnets, Shakespeare's non-dramatic poems are hardly familiar at all -- yet it is possible that he considered them of greater literary merit than his dramatic works. An Introduction to Shakespeare's Poems provides a lively, informative and up-to-date guide to Shakespeare's non-dramatic poetry, including the two narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, the Sonnets, and various minor poems, some of which have only recently, and controversially, been attributed to the Bard. Peter Hyland locates Shakespeare as a sceptical voice within the turbulent and often hostile Elizabethan market-place in which professional poets had to work, rather than depicting him as a transmitter of elitist principles. Hyland relates the poems to the aesthetic tastes, social values and political concerns of the time, and explores what Shakespeare's poetry has to offer to the twenty-first century reader. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Peter Hyland is Professor of English, Huron College, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction	1	(6)
Shakespeare Becomes a Poet	7	(13)
Shakespeare and the Literary Marketplace	20	(22)
Patronage	24	(7)
Shakespeare and Southampton	31	(3)
Shakespeare on Court Poetry and Patronage	34	(8)
The Art of Poetry	42	(13)
Shakespeare and Ovidian Poetry	55	(12)
The Epyllion	55	(3)
Shakespeare and Ovid	58	(6)
The Texts	64	(1)
The Dedications	65	(2)
Venus and Adonis	67	(29)
Some Readers	72	(4)
The Reader and the Narrator	76	(3)
Myth and Anti-Myth	79	(5)
Venus	84	(6)
Adonis	90	(3)
Conclusions	93	(3)
The Rape of Lucrece	96	(29)
Readers and Issues	101	(4)
Myth and its Uses	105	(4)
The Narrator and Patriarchal Values	109	(3)
Tarquin	112	(5)
Lucrece	117	(5)
Conclusions	122	(3)
Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Sonnet	125	(23)
The Development of the Sonnet	125	(11)
Shake-speare's Sonnets	136	(12)
Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: 1	148	(20)
Sonnet 1: A Reading	151	(3)
Breeding Immortality	154	(5)
Gender-Bending	159	(3)
Is Love Love?	162	(6)
Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: 2	168	(26)
The `Black' Mistress	168	(7)
`Will' and the Poet	175	(6)
Time's Tyranny and the Poet's Pen	181	(4)
Conclusions	185	(2)
Coda: `A Lover's Complaint'	187	(7)
Various Poems	194	(20)
Conclusion	214	(2)
Notes	216	(8)
Suggested Reading	224	(4)
Index	228