Speech and Performance in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Plays

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Cambridge University Press, 2002 M10 17 - 262 pages
David Schalkwyk offers a sustained reading of Shakespeare's sonnets in relation to his plays. He argues that the la nguage of the sonnets is primarily performative rather than descriptive. In a wide-ranging analysis of both the 1609 quarto of Shakespeare's sonnets and the Petrarchan discourses in a selection of plays, Schalkwyk addresses such issues as embodiment and silencing, interiority and theatricality, inequalities of power, status, gender and desire, both in the published poems and on the stage and in the context of the early modern period.

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Contents

Acknowledgements page viii
1
the sonnets Antony and Cleopatra
29
the sonnets Loves Labours Lost Romeo
59
Juliet and Twelfth Night 5999
102
the sonnets Romeo and Juliet Troilus
150
the sonnets and Alls Well that Ends Well
198
Conclusion
238
Index
253
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About the author (2002)

David Schalkwyk is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Cape Town. He has published on Shakespeare, literary theory, philosophy, and South African literature in the Shakespeare Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Pretexts, Linguistic Sciences, Textus, and the Journal of Literary Studies.

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