Synopses & Reviews
Shakespeare and Genre provides a comprehensive survey of approaches to key issues related to genre in Shakespeare's work. Contributors probe deeply into genre theory and history by relating Renaissance conceptions of these ideas to contemporary ones. This stimulating volume proposes to read Shakespeare through genre and, just as importantly, read genre through Shakespeare.
Review
'
Shakespeare and Genre focuses readers not only on the methods Shakespeare employed in approaching genre, but also on how our own generic conditioning influences our ability to describe and understand those methods. The line-up of contributors here is stunning. In bringing together scholars interested in how Shakespeare writes/adapts genres and how Shakespearean genres are conceived and re-adapted, this anthology performs work that simply has not been done before.' - Greg Semenza, professor, University of Connecticut
'Genre is an unavoidable topic for anyone interested in Shakespeare and is still one of the central issues in literary criticism. With the help of some of the most distinguished scholars in the fields of Shakespeare, linguistics, performance, film and media studies, Guneratne has produced an incisive, provocative and very rich book. Exploring the borderlands between aesthetic forms, Shakespeare and Genre is also a rare achievement because of its comprehensive approach, which allows the early modern to enter into illuminating dialogue with the postmodern.' - Jean-Christophe Mayer, Senior Research Fellow, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)
Synopsis
Shakespeare and Genre provides a comprehensive survey of approaches to key issues related to genre in Shakespeare's work. Contributors probe deeply into genre theory and history by relating Renaissance conceptions of these ideas to contemporary ones. This stimulating volume proposes to read Shakespeare through genre and, just as importantly, read genre through Shakespeare.
About the Author
Anthony Guneratne teaches the cultural history of film and its relation to other artistic media at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of Shakespeare, Film Studies, and the Visual Cultures of Modernity and has written extensively on contemporary representations of the Renaissance, the literature of postcoloniality and globalization, world cinema, and the representation of history in visual media.
Table of Contents
Kin, Kind, and Shakespeares Significance to Genre Studies - Anthony R. Guneratne * SECTION I: Shakespeare and Renaissance Genres * PART I: Origins and Conventions * Shakespeare the Metalinguist - David Crystal * Murdering Peasants: Status, Genre, and the Representation of Rebellion - Stephen Greenblatt * "The Stage Is Hung with Black": Genre and the Trappings of Stagecraft in Shakespearean Tragedy - Andrew Gurr * PART II: Shakespeares Deployments of Genre * Shakespeares Development of Theatrical Genres: Genre as Adaptation in the Comedies and Histories - David Bevington * The Shakespeare Remix: Romance, Tragicomedy, and Shakespeares "Distinct Kind" - Lawrence Danson * PART III: Shakespeare and the Reconfiguration of Genres in Performance * Turning Genre on Its Head: Shakespeares Refashioning of His Sources in Richard III, King Lear, and The Winters Tale - Steven J. Lynch * Shakespearean Comedy, Tempest-Tossd: Genre, Social Transformation, and Contemporary Performance - Diana Henderson * SECTION II: Shakespeare and Contemporary Genres * PART I: Shakespeare and Culturally Specific Genres * Comical Tragedies and Other Poly-generic Shakespeares in Contemporary China and Diasporic Chinese Culture - Alex Huang * King Lear East of Berlin: Tragedy under Socialist Realism and Afterwards - Boika Sokolova and Alexander Shurbanov * PART II: Shakespeare-based Genres in Other Media * Shakespeare and Film Genre in the Branagh Generation - Samuel Crowl * Genre and Televised Shakespeare: Evolving Forms and Shifting Definitions - Tony Howard * Shakespeare and Media Allegory - Peter S. Donaldson * PART III: Shakespeare as Genre * Shakespeare Among the Philosophers - Charles Martindale * "Ill teach you differences": Genre Literacy, Critical Pedagogy, and Screen Shakespeare - Douglas M. Lanier