The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy

by Michael Neill (Editor), David Schalkwyk (Editor)

Overview

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy presents fifty-four essays by a range of scholars from all parts of the world. Together these essays offer readers a fresh and comprehensive understanding of Shakespeare tragedies as both works of literature and as performance texts written by a playwright who was himself an experienced actor. The opening section explores ways in which later generations of critics have shaped our idea of 'Shakespearean' tragedy, and addresses questions of genre by examining the playwright's inheritance from the classical and medieval past. The second section is devoted to current textual issues, while the third offers new critical readings of each of the tragedies. This is set beside a group of essays that deal with performance history, with screen productions, and with versions devised for the operatic stage, as well as with twentieth and twenty-first century re-workings of Shakespearean tragedy. The book's final section expands readers' awareness of Shakespeare's global reach, tracing histories of criticism and performance across Europe, the Americas, Australasia, the Middle East, Africa, India, and East Asia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198724193
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/28/2016
Series:	Oxford Handbooks
Pages:	992
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.80(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

Michael Neill, University of Auckland, David Schalkwyk, Queen Mary University of London

Michael Neill is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Auckland. He is the author of Issues of Death (1997) and Putting History to the Question (2000). He has edited a number of early modern plays, including Anthony and Cleopatra (1994) and Othello (2006) for the Oxford Shakespeare, and (most recently) The Renegado (2010) for Arden Early Modern Drama, as well as The Spanish Tragedy (2014) and The Duchess of Malfi (2015) for Norton Critical Editions.

David Schalkwyk is Professor in Shakespeare Studies at Queen Mary University of London and Director of the Centre for Global Shakespeare. He was formerly Director of Research at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC and editor of Shakespeare Quarterly. Before that he was Professor of English at the University of Cape Town, where he held the positions of Head of Department and Deputy Dean in the faculty of the Humanities. His books include Speech and Performance in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Plays (Cambridge, 2002), Literature and the Touch of the Real (Delaware, 2004), and Shakespeare, Love and Service (Cambridge, 2008). His most recent book is Hamlet's Dreams: The Robben Island Shakespeare, published in 2013 by the Arden Shakespeare. He has just completed a monograph on love in Shakespeare.

Table of Contents

I. GenreWhat is Shakespearean Tragedy?, Paul A. KottmanThe Classical Inheritance, Richard HalpernThe Medieval Inheritance, Rory LoughnaneThe Romantic Inheritance, Edward PechterEthics and Shakespearean Tragedy, Tzachi ZamirCharacter in Shakespearean Tragedy, Emma SmithPreposterous Nature, Philip ArmstrongShakespearean Tragedy and the Language of Lament, Lynne MagnussonThe Pity of It: Shakespearean Tragedy and Affect, David Hillman'Do You See This?' The Politics of Attention in Shakespearean Tragedy, Steven MullaneyTragedy and Religion: Religion and Revenge in Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, Peter LakeShakespeare's Anatomies of Death, Richard Sugg'Minded Like the Weather': the Tragic Body and its Passions, Gail PasterShakespeare's Tragedy and English History, Andrew HadfieldShakespeare's Tragedy and Roman History, Tom BishopTragedy and the Satiric Voice, Hester Lees-Jeffries'The action of my life': tragedy, tragicomedy, and Shakespeare's mimetic experiments, Subha MukherjiQueer Tragedy, or Two Meditations on Cause, Lee Edelman and Madhavi MenonII. Textual IssuesAuthorial Revision in the Tragedies, Paul Werstine1. Digital Approaches to the Language of Shakespearean Tragedy, Michael Witmore, Jonathan Hope and Michael GleicherIII. Reading the tragedies'Romaine Tragedie': The Designs of Titus Andronicus, Michael NeillRomeo and Juliet as Event, Crystal BartolovichJulius Caesar: Making History, Emily BartelsThe Question of Hamlet, Catherine BelseySeeing Blackness, Reading Race in Othello, Ian SmithKing Lear and the Death of the World, Leah S. Marcus'O horror! horror! horror!' Macbeth and the Gothic, Andrew J. PowerAntony and Cleopatra, Bernhard KleinCoriolanus: A Tragedy of Language, David SchalkwykIV: Stage and ScreenEarly Modern Tragedy and Performance, Tiffany SternPerforming Shakespearean Tragedy, 1660-1780, Peter HollandStaging Shakespearean Tragedy: the Nineteenth Century, Russell JacksonTragedy in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Theatre Production: Hamlet, Lear, and the Politics of Intimacy, Bridget EscolmeOntological Shivers: The Cinematic Afterlives of Romeo and Juliet, Courtney LehmannHamlet: Tragedy and Film Adaptation, Douglas LanierIntermediated Bodies and Bodies of Media: Screen Othellos, Sujata IyengarScreening the Tragedies King Lear, Macdonald P. JacksonMacbeth on Changing Screens, Katherine RoweThe Roman Plays on Screen: Autonomy, Serialization, Conflation, Sarah Hatchuel & Nathalie Vienne-Guerin'The Bowe of Ulysses': Reworking the Tragedies of Shakespeare, Peter ByrneShakespeare's Tragedies on the Operatic Stage, William GermanoV. The Tragedies Worldwidei. European ResponsesThe Tragedies in Italy, Shaul BassiThe Tragedies in Germany, Andreas HofeleFrench Receptions of Shakespearean Tragedy: Between Liberty And Memory, Pascale Drouet & Nathalie Rivere de CarlesEastern Europe, Pavel DrabekIn equal scale weighing delight and dole: Shakespearean Tragedy in Russia, John Givensii. The Wider WorldShakespearean Tragedy in the Nineteenth Century United States: the case of Julius Caesar, Gay SmithUnsettling the Bard: Australasia and the Pacific, Mark HoulahanShakespeare's Tragedies in Southern Africa, Colette Gordon, Daniel Roux and David SchalkwykIn Blood Stepped in: Tragedy and the Modern Israelites, Araham OzShakespeare's Tragedies in North Africa and the Arab World, Khalid AmineShakespearean Tragedy in Latin America and the Caribbean, Margarida Gandara Rauen & Alfredo ModenessiShakespearean Tragedy in India: politics of genre / or how newness entered Indian literary culture, Poonam Trivedi'It is the east': Shakespearean Tragedies in East Asia, Alexa Huang

Editorial Reviews

"A major collection of essays on Shakespearean tragedy" — Vanessa Lim, The English Association

"an enormous volume ... What I particularly appreciate about this collection is the editors' commitment to accommodating a range of approaches to tragedy." —Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

From the Publisher