Retheorizing Shakespeare through Presentist Readings (Routledge Studies in Shakespeare)
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- Synopsis
- This book offers a theoretical rationale for the emerging presentist movement in Shakespeare studies and goes on to show, in a series of close readings, that a presentist Shakespeare is not an anachronism. Relying on a Brechtian aesthetic of "naïve surrealism" as the performative model of the early modern, urban, public theater, James O’Rourke demonstrates how this Brechtian model is able to capture the full range of interplays that could take place between Shakespeare’s words, the nonillusionist performance devices of the early modern stage, and the live audiences that shared the physical space of the theatre with Shakespeare’s actors. O’Rourke argues that the limitations placed upon the critical energies of early modern drama by the influential new historicist paradigm of contained subversion is based on a poetics of the sublime, which misrepresents the performative aesthetic of the theater as a self-sufficient spectacle that compels reception in its own terms. Reimagining Shakespeare as our contemporary, O’Rourke shows how the immanent critical logic of Shakespeare’s works can enter into dialogue with our most sophisticated critiques of our cultural fictions.
- Copyright:
- 2012
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Book Size:
- 190 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9781136505089
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780203145197, 9780415897037
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Date of Addition:
- 09/02/23
- Copyrighted By:
- Taylor and Francis
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Literature and Fiction, Drama, Plays and Theater, Language Arts
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.