War And Nation In The Theatre Of Shakespeare And His Contemporaries

Author : Simon Barker
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 0748631623
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book War and Nation in the Theatre of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries written by Simon Barker and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2007-11-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This original study explores a vital aspect of early modern cultural history: the way that warfare is represented in the theatre of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The book contrasts the Tudor and Stuart prose that called for the establishment of a standing army in the name of nation, discipline and subjectivity, and the drama of the period that invited critique of this imperative. Barker examines contemporary dramatic texts both for their radical position on war and, in the case of the later drama, for their subversive commentary on an emerging idealisation of Shakespeare and his work.The book argues that the early modern period saw the establishment of political, social and theological attitudes to war that were to become accepted as natural in succeeding centuries. Barker's reading of the drama of the period reveals the discontinuities in this project as a way of commenting on the use of the past within modern warfare. The book is also a survey and analysis of literary theory over the last tw

Author : Nicholas de Somogyi
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351900706
Total Pages : 474 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Shakespeare’s Theatre of War written by Nicholas de Somogyi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period between 1585 (when Elizabeth formally committed her military support to the Dutch wars against Spain) and 1604 (when James at last brought it to an end) was one in which English life was preoccupied by the menace and actuality of war. The same period spans English drama’s coming of age, from Tamburlaine to Hamlet. In this thought-provoking book, Nick de Somogyi draws on a wide range of contemporary military literature (news-letters and war-treatises, maps and manuals), to demonstrate how deeply wartime experience influenced the production and reception of Elizabethan theatre. In a series of vivid parallels, the roles of soldier and actor, the setting of battlefield and stage, and the context of playhouse and muster are shown to have been rooted in the common experience of war. The local armoury served as a props department; the stage as a military lecture-hall. News from the front line has always been shrouded in the fog of war. Shakespeare’s Rumour is here seen as kindred to such equally dubious messengers as his Armado, Falstaff or Pistol; soldiers have always told tall tales, military ghost-stories that are here shown to have seeped into such narratives as The Spanish Tragedy and Henry V. This book concludes with a sustained account of Hamlet, a play which both dramatises the Elizabethan context of war-fever, and embodies in its three variant texts the war and peace that shaped its production. By affording scrutiny to each of its title’s components, Shakespeare’s Theatre of War provides a compelling argument for reassessing the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries within the enduring context of the military culture and wartime experience of his age.

Author : Robert White
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 139951623X
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Shakespeare Against War written by Robert White and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whilst Shakespearean drama provides eloquent calls to war, more often than not these are undercut or outweighed by compelling appeals to peaceful alternatives conveyed through narrative structure, dramatic context and poetic utterance. Placing Shakespeare's works in the history of pacifist thought, Robert White argues that Shakespeare's plays consistently challenge appeals to heroism and revenge and reveal the brutal futility of war. White also examines Shakespeare's interest in the mental states of military officers when their ingrained training is tested in love relationships. In imagery and themes, war infiltrates love, with problematical consequences, reflected in Shakespeare's comedies, histories and tragedies alike. Challenging a critical orthodoxy that military engagement in war is an inevitable and necessary condition, White draws analogies with the experience of modern warfare, showing the continuing relevance of Shakespeare's plays which deal with basic issues of war and peace that are still evident.

Author : Heather Hirschfeld
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191043451
Total Pages : 592 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy written by Heather Hirschfeld and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy offers critical and contemporary resources for studying Shakespeare's comic enterprises. It engages with perennial, yet still urgent questions raised by the comedies and looks at them from a range of new perspectives that represent the most recent methodological approaches to Shakespeare, genre, and early modern drama. Several chapters take up firmly established topics of inquiry such Shakespeare's source materials, gender and sexuality, hetero- and homoerotic desire, race, and religion, and they reformulate these topics in the materialist, formalist, phenomenological, or revisionist terms of current scholarship and critical debate. Others explore subjects that have only relatively recently become pressing concerns for sustained scholarly interrogation, such as ecology, cross-species interaction, and humoral theory. Some contributions, informed by increasingly sophisticated approaches to the material conditions and embodied experience of theatrical practice, speak to a resurgence of interest in performance, from Shakespeare's period through the first decades of the twenty-first century. Others still investigate distinct sets of plays from unexpected and often polemical angles, noting connections between the comedies under inventive, unpredicted banners such as the theology of adultery, early modern pedagogy, global exploration, or monarchical rule. The Handbook situates these approaches against the long history of criticism and provides a valuable overview of the most up-to-date work in the field.

Author : Franziska Quabeck
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110301113
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare written by Franziska Quabeck and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-03-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of the just war poses one of the most important ethical questions to date. Can war ever be justified and, if so, how? When is a cause of war proportional to its costs and who must be held responsible? The monograph Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare demonstrates that the necessary moral evaluation of these questions is not restricted to the philosophical moral and political discourse. This analysis of Shakespeare's plays, which focuses on the histories, tragedies and Roman plays in chronological order, brings to light that the drama includes an elaborate and complex debate of the ethical issues of warfare. The plays that feature in this analysis range from Henry VI to Coriolanus and they are analysed according to the three Aquinian principles of legitimate authority, just cause and right intention. Also extending the principles of analysis to more modern notions of responsibility, proportionality and the jus in bello-presupposition, this monograph shows that just war theory constitutes a dominant theoretical approach to war in the Shakespearean canon.

Author : Paul Innes
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350316989
Total Pages : 130 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Shakespeare's Roman Plays written by Paul Innes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rome was a recurring theme throughout Shakespeare's career, from the celebrated Julius Caesar, to the more obscure Cymbeline. In this book, Paul Innes assesses themes of politics and national identity in these plays through the common theme of Rome. He especially examines Shakespeare's interpretation of Rome and how he presented it to his contemporary audiences. Shakespeare's depiction of Rome changed over his lifetime, and this is discussed in conjunction with the emergence of discourses on the British Empire. Each chapter focuses on a play, which is thoroughly analysed, with regard to both performance and critical reception. Shakespeare's plays are related to the theatrical culture of their time and are considered in light of how they might have been performed to his contemporaries. Innes engages strongly with both the plays the most current scholarship in the field.

Author : Christopher Ivic
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472525833
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Shakespeare and National Identity written by Christopher Ivic and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arden Shakespeare Dictionary on Shakespeare and National Identity makes a timely and valuable contribution to the discipline. National identity in the early modern period is a central topic of scholarly investigation; it is also a dominant topic in classroom instruction and discussion. More than any other early modern playwright, Shakespeare (especially his history plays) is at the heart of recent critical investigations into a host of relevant topics: borders, history, identity, land, memory, nation, place and space. This Dictionary works through Shakespeare's plays and the cultural moment in which they were produced to provide a rich and informative account of such topics. An ideal reference work for upper level students and scholars and an essential resource for any literary library.

Author : Laurie Ellinghausen
Publisher : Modern Language Association
ISBN 13 : 1603293019
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's English History Plays written by Laurie Ellinghausen and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare's history plays make up nearly a third of his corpus and feature iconic characters like Falstaff, the young Prince Hal, and Richard III--as well as unforgettable scenes like the storming of Harfleur. But these plays also present challenges for teachers, who need to help students understand shifting dynastic feuds, manifold concepts of political power, and early modern ideas of the body politic, kingship, and nationhood. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," introduces instructors to the many editions of the plays, the wealth of contextual and critical writings available, and other resources. Part 2, "Approaches," contains essays on topics as various as masculinity and gender, using the plays in the composition classroom, and teaching the plays through Shakespeare's own sources, film, television, and the Web. The essays help instructors teach works that are poetically and emotionally rich as well as fascinating in how they depict Shakespeare's vision of his nation's past and present.

Author : Patrick Gray
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1789202639
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Shakespeare and the Ethics of War written by Patrick Gray and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-09-13 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does Shakespeare represent war? This volume reviews scholarship to date on the question and introduces new perspectives, looking at contemporary conflict through the lens of the past. Through his haunting depiction of historical bloodshed, including the Trojan War, the fall of the Roman Republic, and the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare illuminates more recent political violence, ranging from the British occupation of Ireland to the Spanish Civil War, the Balkans War, and the past several decades of U. S. military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can a war be just? What is the relation between the ruler and the ruled? What motivates ethnic violence? Shakespeare’s plays serve as the frame for careful explorations of perennial problems of human co-existence: the politics of honor, the ethics of diplomacy, the responsibility of non-combatants, and the tension between idealism and Realpolitik.

Author : David Loewenstein
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108681522
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and War written by David Loewenstein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a team of leading international scholars, The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and War illuminates the ways Shakespeare's works provide a rich and imaginative resource for thinking about the topic of war. Contributors explore the multiplicity of conflicting perspectives his dramas offer: war depicted from chivalric, masculine, nationalistic, and imperial perspectives; war depicted as a source of great excitement and as a theater of honor; war depicted from realistic or skeptical perspectives that expose the butchery, suffering, illness, famine, degradation, and havoc it causes. The essays in this volume examine the representations and rhetoric of war throughout Shakespeare's plays, as well as the modern history of the war plays on stage, in film, and in propaganda. This book offers fresh perspectives on Shakespeare's multifaceted representations of the complexities of early modern warfare, while at the same time illuminating why his perspectives on war and its consequences continue to matter now and in the future.