SHAKESPEARE'S REVOLUTION (original) (raw)

The Earl of Oxford and the Making of "Shakespeare": The Literary Life of Edward de Vere in Context

2011

The identity of Shakespeare, the most important poet and dramatist in the English language, has been debated for centuries. This historical work investigates the role of Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, establishing him as the mostly likely candidate for authorship of Shakespeare's literary oeuvre. Topics include an historical overview of English literature from 1530 through 1575, major contemporary transitions in the theatre, and an examination of Oxford's life and the events leading to his literary prominence. The sonnets, his early poetry, juvenile pre-Shakespeare plays, and his acting career are of particular interest. An appendix examines the role of the historical William Shakespeare and how he became associated with Oxford's work.

Shakespeare and the Department of English

In 'English as a Discipline, or, Is There a Plot in this Play?', 1996

(Abstract for the essay collection) "English"-- not the language, but the activity that takes place in English departments at American universities--has long ceased to be anything resembling a single discipline, if in fact it ever was. It is a collection of disparate activities with multiple objects of inquiry, vaguely articulated methodologies, and diverse notions of proof. With new essays by Gerald Graff, Paul Lauter, Louie Crew, George Garrett, Thomas Dabbs, Walter L. Reed, Phyllis Frus, Stanley Corkin, Tilly Warnock, and Stanley Fish, this volume does not attempt to define the discipline. Instead, as Graff observes in the opening chapter, it enacts it, sometimes with a passion verging on violence, each essayist defending interests that are threatened by the others. It is English as theater. The essays can be read in any order; the arguments among them will out. The conflicts rage on even after the curtain falls. But the issues are clarified: What's at stake, not just for English but for society at large, is the tenuous boundary between conversation and chaos.

Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Novel

2016

The eighteenth century has long been acknowledged as a pivotal period in Shakespeare's reception, transforming a playwright requiring 'improvement' into a national poet whose every word was sacred. Scholars have examined the contribution of performances, adaptations, criticism and editing to this process of transformation, but the crucial role of fiction remains overlooked. Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Novel reveals for the first time the prevalence, and the importance, of fictional characters' direct quotations from Shakespeare. Quoting characters ascribe emotional and moral authority to Shakespeare, redeploy his theatricality, and mock banal uses of his words; by shaping in this way what is considered valuable about Shakespeare, the novel accrues new cultural authority of its own. Shakespeare underwrites, and is underwritten by, the eighteenth-century novel, and this book reveals the lasting implications for both of their reputations.

Shakespeare: Revising and Re-visioning

Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 2012

This article engages with one of the current critical and bibliographical concerns of Shakespeare studies: the collaborative nature of Shakespeare’s work. Bibliographers have identified other hands in the fabric of Shakespeare’s plays. Here the focus is Shakespeare’s collaboration in the plays of others. Three such instances will be examined; The Book of Sir Thomas More, The Spanish Tragedy and The Chronicle History of King Lear. Substantially different as these cases may be, in all of them Shakespeare is working with the materials of others. Shakespeare’s King Lear is an adaptation of the older Leir play performed by the Queen’s Men and in that sense it is a deeply collaborative work. As this essay concludes, without a model there would be nothing to stimulate, or provoke or exceed.

Shakespeare beyond Shakespeare

Marxists Shakespeares, 2001

Why is Marxism is dismissed as mere “ideology” by proponents of a “universal Shakespeare,” who by contrast present the Bard as free, autonomous, unfettered by ideology? These two opposed positions have a complex relationship to what Bataille called the “restricted economy” of scarcity and the “general economy” of surplus and plenitude. The idea of a universal aesthetic was constructed in the early modern period as the domain of a spurious general economy of plenitude that was always in service of the restricted economies of market capitalism. Thus, today, universalizing critics such as Harold Bloom perversely construe Shakespeare as “broad” and theory as “narrow.” By contrast, Shershow argues for a model of what Jean-Luc Nancy, building on Bataille, calls “literary communism.” “Shakespeare” re-emerges, not as the heroic, autonomous, universal poet – whose words vibrate in tune with the heroic literary interpreter but instead as what Nancy calls a “singular voice in common.”