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This title offers an introduction to the political and historical context to Shakespeare's tragedy and history plays, written in an accessible, jargon-free style.Shakespeare's Politics is an invaluable introduction to the political world of Shakespeare's plays. It includes passages from the plays together with extracts from contemporary historical and political documents.
The clear, jargon-free narrative introduces and explains the extracts and provides an overview of the key political issues that were debated in late Elizabethan and early Stuart England.The introduction outlines the historical context in which Shakespeare wrote and explains the intellectual principles that informed early modern thinking about politics.
By reading Shakespeare alongside contemporary documents students will be able to develop their own informed critical interpretations of the plays. Shakespeare's Politics is essential for anyone studying Shakespeare while tutors and postgraduate students will find the book's up-to-date survey of modern Shakespeare criticism useful and provocative.
"A new revised and enlarged edition of Robin Headlam Wells' book will be widely welcomed. It combines the features of a reader and a monograph, offering students long quotations from the non-fictional prose works that they (and to many of their teachers) never get around to reading Wells is no slave to fashion, and with Augustan assurance draws a cultural map that is refreshingly conservative, looking at Shakespearean texts in the light of sixteenth century debates, which have too often been ignored by scholars who want to see his plays refracted through the glass of twenty-first century theory."- Michael Hattaway, Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Sheffield
| Preface | p.vii |
| Introduction | p.xi |
| Critical Introduction | p.1 |
| 1. Civilisation and the debate on human nature | p.19 |
| 2. Gender | p.41 |
| 3. Forms of Government | p.64 |
| 4. The Just Ruler | p.90 |
| 5. Rebellion | p.116 |
| 6. Providence and History | p.140 |
| 7. Natural law; Postscript: Shakespeare's politics and modern criticism | p.161 |
| Postscript Shakespear's Politics and Modern Criticism | p.184 |
| Chronology Table | p.216 |
| Bibliography | p.219 |
| Index. | p.231 |
ISBN: 9780826493064
ISBN-10: 0826493068
Audience:
Tertiary; University or College
Format:
Paperback
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 234
Published: 15th January 2009
Dimensions (cm): 21.5 x 13.5
x 1.8
Weight (kg): 0.34
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