Shakespeare's late plays are usually seen in terms of courtliness
and escapism. But the critical tradition has been too decorous.
Neither neo-Christian pieties nor high-political allegory can
account for the works' audacity and surprise, or the popular
investment in both their form and meaning. Post-structuralist and
historicist approaches show the indeterminacy and materiality of
language, but rarely identify how particular figures (words and
characters) capture and energise contested history. Recent
criticism tends to put a pre-emptive `master-paradigm' above all
else; a more sinuous, minutely attentive critical vocabulary is
needed to apprehend Shakespeare's turbulent, precise, teeming
metaphorical discourse. Late Shakespeare: A New World of Words
reappraises the origins of authority, language, and decorum, and
the prospects for each. Through his portrayal of `popular'
desire--in his rustics, clowns, rogues, slaves, women--Shakespeare
presents worlds which explore the meaning of the `subject', and the
potential for effective transformatory agency. Rather than a
Jonsonian (or perhaps earlier Shakespearian) verisimilitude, with
each person discrete and verifiable, Shakespeare's characters
embody metaphor-in-process; like the revamped romance genre itself,
they `take on' surrounding turbulence. The plays show the stormy
consequences of hegemonic violence. The subsequent exile to
wilderness allows for contingent novelty: new liberties are tested
amid the wreckage or recapitulation of old forms. The plays pit
possible sources of regeneration (romantic pastoral, semi-populist
humanism) against more primal violence and rebelliousness. Finally,
the book argues against a conventional sense of the plays' movement
towards divinely sanctioned closure; mischief, irony, polysemy
remain; romance's political problems are competitive, multiple, and
tumescently unpredictable.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
