Teaching with Shakespeare: Critics in the ClassroomBruce McIver, Ruth Stevenson University of Delaware Press, 1994 - 269 pages "Today the number and nature of interpretive strategies developed by contemporary theorists for reading Shakespeare's texts may not only delight but also disconcert the scholars, critics, teachers, and students who study them. In this work, six leading Shakespearean scholar-critics, in a series of clear and elegant lectures delivered to undergraduate English majors, explain distinctive procedures that they and other influential, contemporary critics use for interpreting Shakespeare's poems and plays. Workshops, which illustrate with Shakespearean texts the practice of specific methods, follow the lectures." "Helen Vendler (Harvard) guides readers to Shakespeare's poetry by explaining and illustrating how to hear the unexpected and unobtrusive but crucial questions that sonnets pose, and by tracing the increasingly powerful perceptions that precise, informed aesthetic responses to these questions evoke. R. A. Foakes (UCLA) identifies basic cultural issues underlying traditional approaches to teaching Shakespeare's plays, especially the tragedies, and explains how poststructuralist responses to these issues lead to a reevaluation of the "Bard." Leah Marcus (U. Texas, Austin) also explains cultural issues, particularly about the "construct" that has become "Shakespeare," and introduces editorial questions about the actual textual versions offered to students, notably of Hamlet and King Lear. With emphasis on the plays in performance, John Wilders (Oxford, Middlebury) delivers a structure-oriented, acting-centered analysis of Julius Caesar and then directs, in similar fashion, a production of the first scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Patricia Parker (Stanford), on the other hand, follows intricate lines of wordplay through a series of deconstructions and reconstructions in The Merry Wives of Windsor and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bringing the series to a close, Annabel Patterson (Duke) presents an explicitly issue-oriented analysis of editorial, critical, scholarly, dramatic, and cinematic interpretations of Henry V; and she offers a concluding commentary on the workshops of her colleagues."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
From inside the book
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Page 7
... 3.3 117 LEAH MARCUS Dramatic Structure and Effect in Julius Caesar 142 Teaching A Midsummer Night's Dream 152 A Midsummer Night's Dream 1.1.1-251 163 JOHN WILDERS Interpreting Through Wordplay : The Merry Wives of Windsor 166.
... 3.3 117 LEAH MARCUS Dramatic Structure and Effect in Julius Caesar 142 Teaching A Midsummer Night's Dream 152 A Midsummer Night's Dream 1.1.1-251 163 JOHN WILDERS Interpreting Through Wordplay : The Merry Wives of Windsor 166.
Page 14
... structure which leads us to ask " why the octave of this sonnet is so luxuriously expressive and the human ' application ' in the quatrain so bare " and to see and to feel exactly why this sonnet was written " the wrong - way round ...
... structure which leads us to ask " why the octave of this sonnet is so luxuriously expressive and the human ' application ' in the quatrain so bare " and to see and to feel exactly why this sonnet was written " the wrong - way round ...
Page 15
... structural practice can lead and offered two vivid examples of such extrem- ism by professional critics , in his own analysis of Hamlet he skillfully exposed the limitations of determinate , unified , and ultimately , if indirect- ly ...
... structural practice can lead and offered two vivid examples of such extrem- ism by professional critics , in his own analysis of Hamlet he skillfully exposed the limitations of determinate , unified , and ultimately , if indirect- ly ...
Page 17
... Structure and Dramatic Effect , " he concentrated on actual stage activity to explain his method of teaching Shakespeare , which varies sharply from those of his own teachers as well as from those of other critics working today . Like ...
... Structure and Dramatic Effect , " he concentrated on actual stage activity to explain his method of teaching Shakespeare , which varies sharply from those of his own teachers as well as from those of other critics working today . Like ...
Page 24
... structures in differing languages . Brower was a critic , rather than a historian of ideas or a biographical writer ... structure ; for Frye , to see overarching architectonic forms was to perceive how the details fit into a whole . My ...
... structures in differing languages . Brower was a critic , rather than a historian of ideas or a biographical writer ... structure ; for Frye , to see overarching architectonic forms was to perceive how the details fit into a whole . My ...
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Teaching with Shakespeare: Critics in the Classroom Bruce McIver,Ruth Stevenson No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
actors adjectives audience battle of Agincourt bliss Branagh Caesar called character classroom context conveying Cordelia cozening critical cultural cultural materialists death Demetrius disestablishing doth Dover Wilson dramatic Duke edition Elizabethan English Evans extreme Falstaff father feel figure film Foakes Folio version French Germans Goneril Grammar Scene Hamlet hath haue Helen Vendler Henry Hermia interpretation Kenneth Branagh Kent kind King Lear language Latin Lear's literary London look Lord lovers lust Lysander Marcus mean Merry Wives Midsummer Night's Dream Mistress mora night Ovid Oxford play's plot poem poststructuralist Pyramus Pyramus and Thisbe Quarto version quatrain question Regan Renaissance revenge sense Shakespeare's plays Shakespeare's sonnets soliloquy sonnet speak speech stage Teaching Shakespeare textual theater thee there's Theseus thing Thisby Thisby's thou tion tradition translation University Press Vendler wall women wordplay words workshop
Popular passages
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