First Readers of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1590-1790 (Hardcover)

For more than four centuries, cultural preferences, literary values, critical contexts, and personal tastes have governed readers' responses to Shakespeare's sonnets. Early private readers often considered these poems in light of the religious, political, and humanist values by which they lived. Other seventeenth- and eighteenth- century readers, such as stationers and editors, balanced their personal literary preferences against the imagined or actual interests of the literate public to whom they marketed carefully curated editions of the sonnets, often successfully. Whether public or private, however, many disparate sonnet interpretations from the sonnets' first two centuries in print have been overlooked by modern sonnet scholarship, with its emphasis on narrative and amorous readings of the 1609 sequence. First Readers of Shakespeare's Sonnets reintroduces many early readings of Shakespeare's sonnets, arguing that studying the priorities and interpretations of these previous readers expands the modern critical applications of these poems, thereby affording them numerous future applications. This volume draws upon book history, manuscript studies, and editorial theory to recover four lost critical approaches to the sonnets, highlighting early readers' interests in Shakespeare's classical adaptations, political applicability, religious themes, and rhetorical skill during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

General

Imprint:	Routledge
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Routledge Studies in Shakespeare
Release date:	September 2020
First published:	2021
Authors:	Faith D. Acker
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 21mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	246
ISBN-13:	978-0-367-50136-5
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Plays & playwrights > 16th to 18th centuries > Shakespeare studies & criticism Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Drama texts, plays > 16th to 18th centuries > Shakespeare plays, texts
LSN:	0-367-50136-8
Barcode:	9780367501365

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