Shakespeare Relocated

Hugh Macrae Richmond uses his previous published essays to illustrate the development of modern attitudes to religion, politics and sexuality.

In Shakespeare Relocated, Hugh Macrae Richmond uses his previously published essays to illustrate the development of modern attitudes towards religion, politics, and sexuality. He traces the complex evolution from classical and medieval sources to Reformation and Renaissance ones by reviewing literary themes, styles, and attitudes. He stresses Shakespeare's unique place in the evolution of historical psychology as an author profoundly affected by the Reformation. This study of developing sensibility employs a method of critical analysis bridging the apparent gap between scholarly research and practical criticism and transcends the discontinuities and tensions in modern literary theory. He seeks to harmonize the critical alertness of the New Critics with the traditional scholarship of their opponents, while avoiding the narrowness of many fashionable modern methodologies such as New Historicism, Neo-Freudianism, radical feminism, etc. This historical perspective involves a comparative critical procedure defined as "syncretic criticism." It combines close reading and comprehensive perspective over previous literary analogues to identify distinctive progressions towards many modern attitudes about politics, morality, sexuality, and fashion.

Autorentext

Professor Emeritus of English at University of California, Berkeley, Hugh Macrae Richmond (B.A. at Cambridge, D.Phil. at Oxford) has diplomas in Italian (Florence) and German (Munich). His work includes books on Shakespeare and Milton, love poetry, and landscape poetry; documentaries on Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton; and the websites Shakespeare s Staging and Milton Revealed.

Klappentext

In Shakespeare Relocated, Hugh Macrae Richmond uses his previously published essays to illustrate the development of modern attitudes towards religion, politics, and sexuality. He traces the complex evolution from classical and medieval sources to Reformation and Renaissance ones by reviewing literary themes, styles, and attitudes. He stresses Shakespeare s unique place in the evolution of historical psychology as an author profoundly affected by the Reformation. This study of developing sensibility employs a method of critical analysis bridging the apparent gap between scholarly research and practical criticism and transcends the discontinuities and tensions in modern literary theory. He seeks to harmonize the critical alertness of the New Critics with the traditional scholarship of their opponents, while avoiding the narrowness of many fashionable modern methodologies such as New Historicism, Neo-Freudianism, radical feminism, etc. This historical perspective involves a comparative critical procedure defined as "syncretic criticism." It combines close reading and comprehensive perspective over previous literary analogues to identify distinctive progressions towards many modern attitudes about politics, morality, sexuality, and fashion.

Inhalt

Part I. Introduction - Shakespeare Relocated: Studies in Historical Psychology - Part II. Historical Psychology Versus "Literary" Criticism - "New Criticism" as a Humanist Fallacy - Personal Identity and Literary Personae - Shakespeare and "Globe"-alization - Shakespeare and Prehistory - Richard III and the Reformation - Part III. How to Write A Renaissance Play - Amatory Magnetism: Shakespeare's Algorithm - Feminist and Gay Readings of Shakespeare Performances - The Triple Bond: Cinthio, Lope de Vega, and Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet and Lope de Vega's Castelvines y Monteses - Part IV. Comical-Historical - Shakespeare's Navarre - Comical Historical: Literary History Beyond Historicism - Shakespeare's Anti-Reformation Comedies - Ethnic Conflict in Much Ado - Much Ado in Context - Part V. "Reformed" Love Poetry - The Dark Lady as Reformation Mistress - Shakespeare's Emilias - Aretino Bettered: Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 - Donne's Master: The Young Shakespeare - Proto-Feminism: Seductions in Shakespeare and Milton - Part VI. Tragedy Transcended - "To be or not to be ..." Reinterpreted - Iago as Director - Enjoying King Lear - Index.