When Shakespeare gave up tragedy around 1607 and turned to the new form we call romance or tragicomedy, he created a distinctive poetic idiom that often bewildered audiences and readers. The plays of this period, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, as well as Shakespeare's part in the collaborations with John Fletcher (Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen), exhibit a challenging verse style - verbally condensed, metrically and syntactically sophisticated, both conversational and highly wrought. In Shakespeare's Late Style, McDonald anatomizes the components of this late style, illustrating in a series of topically organized chapters the contribution of such features as ellipsis, grammatical suspension, and various forms of repetition. Resisting the sentimentality that frequently attends discussion of an artist's 'late' period, Shakespeare's Late Style shows how the poetry of the last plays reveals their creator's ambivalent attitude towards art, language, men and women, the theatre, and his own professional career.
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Introduction; 1. The idioms of the late tragedies; 2. Elision; 3. Syntax (I): divagation; 4. Syntax (II): suspension; 5. Repetition; 6. Style and the making of meaning.
Review of the hardback: 'McDonald's analysis is both original and convincing. He is an attuned close reader, combining sensitivity to tone and metre with precision.' The Times Literary Supplement
A study of the poetry spoken in Shakespeare's late plays, including The Winter's Tale.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780521820684
Publisert
2006-08-10
Utgiver
Vendor
Cambridge University Press
Vekt
530 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Dybde
16 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
272

Forfatter

Biographical note

Russ McDonald is Bank of America Excellence Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.