Medieval Shakespeare

by Morse, Ruth; Cooper, Helen; Holland, Peter

• ISBN13: 9781107016279
• ISBN10: 1107016274
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-04-30
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

For many, Shakespeare represents the advent of modernity. It is easy to forget that he was in fact a writer deeply embedded in the Middle Ages, who inherited many of his shaping ideas and assumptions from the medieval past. This collection brings together essays by internationally renowned scholars of medieval and early modern literature, the history of the book and theatre history to present new perspectives on Shakespeare and his medieval heritage. Separated into four parts, the collection explores Shakespeare and his work in the context of the Middle Ages, medieval books and language, the British past, and medieval conceptions of drama and theatricality, together showing Shakespeare's work as rooted in late medieval history and culture. Insisting upon Shakespeare's complexity and medieval multiplicity, Medieval Shakespeare gives readers the opportunity to appreciate both Shakespeare and his period within the traditions that fostered and surrounded him.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Middle Ages and Shakespeare:

Shakespeare's Middle Ages

Late Shakespeare and the Middle Ages

Books and Language:

The mediated 'medieval' and Shakespeare

'Not know my voice?': Shakespeare corrected; English perfected - theories of language from the Middle Ages to Modernity

The afterlife of personification

The British Past:

'King Lear in BC Albion'

Shakespeare and the remains of Britain

The Theatrical Dimension:

The art of playing

Blood begetting blood: Shakespeare and the Mysteries

From scaffold to discovery-space: change and continuity

Performing the Middle Ages

Afterword: the evil of 'medieval'

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.