Shakespeare and the Poetics and Politics of Relevance (Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700)

Synopsis

Four years on from George Floyd’s murder, this volume asks if and how Shakespeare might be relevant—whether in performance, in the classroom, or in scholarship—to the pressing issues of social and climate justice. This question, however, is accompanied by the acute and uncomfortable recognition that there have been other consequences to the awakening of the world since Floyd's death, including the call to cancel Shakespeare altogether. This volume, however, is not an apology for Shakespeare but rather an engagement with him. From the perspective of the scholars who contribute here, questions about Shakespeare in our current context are not only deeply enmeshed with issues about his historical, geographical, and performance context and its attendant alterity, but crucially also to the specifically literary forms and structures with which he worked. Even as these essays resist the idea of a “timeless,” universalist Shakespeare, they insist upon the “poetics,” the creative framework, the specifically literary dimensions of the plays that cannot be reduced to any paraphrasable content. These are precisely the features that facilitate and enable the “relevance” of Shakespeare’s works even across the chasm of the centuries since he composed them.

Copyright:

2024

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9783031668982

Related ISBNs:

9783031668975

Publisher:

Springer Nature Switzerland

Date of Addition:

11/10/24

Copyrighted By:

The Editor

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Poetry, Literature and Fiction, Drama, Plays and Theater, Language Arts

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.

Edited by:

Dympna Callaghan

Edited by:

Sophie Chiari