Teaching with Shakespeare: Critics in the Classroom"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 |
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Page 45
Vendler : Well , it could exactly match it : “ all this the world knows well , yet none
knows well . ” Okay ? How come we have it flipped over ? Aud . : Isn ' t it called a
chiasmus ? Vendler : Yes , it ' s called a chiasmus . It ' s a figure of speech . Aud .
Vendler : Well , it could exactly match it : “ all this the world knows well , yet none
knows well . ” Okay ? How come we have it flipped over ? Aud . : Isn ' t it called a
chiasmus ? Vendler : Yes , it ' s called a chiasmus . It ' s a figure of speech . Aud .
Page 181
In Shakespeare ' s Merry Wives , a figure called the “ Host ” similarly attempts to
reconcile what he terms “ the terrestrial ” and “ the celestial ” — in the figures of
the warring Doctor and Parson of the play . And their revenge on him is to send ...
In Shakespeare ' s Merry Wives , a figure called the “ Host ” similarly attempts to
reconcile what he terms “ the terrestrial ” and “ the celestial ” — in the figures of
the warring Doctor and Parson of the play . And their revenge on him is to send ...
Page 205
Within the mechanicals ' play is a character called “ Wall ” — “ that vile Wall ,
which did these lovers sunder " ( 5 . 1 . 132 ) — from the story of these lovers in
Ovid ' s Metamorphoses . The Wall first presents its “ crannied hole or chink " (
158 ) ...
Within the mechanicals ' play is a character called “ Wall ” — “ that vile Wall ,
which did these lovers sunder " ( 5 . 1 . 132 ) — from the story of these lovers in
Ovid ' s Metamorphoses . The Wall first presents its “ crannied hole or chink " (
158 ) ...
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Contents
List of Figures | 9 |
Poems Posing Questions | 23 |
The Sonnets | 37 |
Copyright | |
13 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Teaching with Shakespeare: Critics in the Classroom Union College (Schenectady N y ) Limited preview - 1994 |
Teaching with Shakespeare: Critics in the Classroom Bruce McIver,Ruth Stevenson No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
action appear audience authority bear become beginning called carry character comes conveying Cordelia critical cultural death Dream early edition effect Elizabethan English Enter example extreme Falstaff father feel figure final Folio follow French Germans give Hamlet hand Henry interesting interpretation it's Kent kill kind King Lear language Latin less literary London look lord lovers Marcus mean Merry Wives mind morall never night Oxford performance play plot poem political possible present Press production Quarto question reason recent reference relation scene seems sense Shakespeare soliloquy sonnet speak stage stands structure suggests teaching tell thing thou thought tion tradition translation true turn University Vendler wall whole women
Bibliographic information
| Title | Teaching with Shakespeare: Critics in the Classroom |
| Author | Union College (Schenectady N y ) |
| Editors | Bruce McIver, Ruth Stevenson |
| Contributor | Union College (Schenectady, N.Y.). English Department |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | University of Delaware Press, 1994 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | 28 May 2008 |
| ISBN | 0874134919, 9780874134919 |
| Length | 269 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |