Shakespearean Tragedy (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

by A.C. Bradley, Karin S. Coddon (Introduction)

Overview

Shakespearean Tragedy is a landmark work of literary criticism. It is at once the pinnacle of the nineteenth centurys love affair with Shakespeare and the starting point for a new century of Shakespeare scholarship.

Critics have charged that A.C. Bradley attends to character at the expense of other elements of the plays, such as theme, dramatic structure, and historical background; Bradleys defenders have praised the work for its philosophical and psychological insights. As the first important, book-length academic study in English of four of Shakespeares major tragedies - Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth - Bradleys work both influenced and enabled modern Shakespearean literary criticism even as it engaged with, and often rebutted, conventional Romantic and Victorian interpretations of the plays and their author.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781411430341
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Series:	Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	844,213
File size:	848 KB
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

Andrew Cecil Bradley was born in 1851. His father, the Revered Charles Bradley, was a clergyman renowned for the powerful and eloquent sermons he preached to his congregations. Reverend Bradley was also a prolific progenitor, siring twenty-two children (of which Andrew Cecil was the youngest). Andrew Cecil Bradley seems to have developed a passion for poetry early in life. He especially admired the great English Romantics Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, and John Keats. At seventeen Bradley enrolled at Oxford University, where he went from undergraduate to fellow, then lecturer, at Balliol College, a hub of progressive thinking and intellectual skepticism about traditional knowledge, such as literal interpretations of the Bible. Although a philosopher by training, Bradley found subsequent academic positions in first Liverpool, then Glasgow, chiefly in modern literature. In 1901 Bradley returned to Oxford to accept a five year position as Chair of Poetry.