A Companion to Shakespeare′s Works: Volumes I – IV: v. 1-4 (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture)

This four–volume Companion to Shakespeare′s Works, compiled as a single entity, offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism. Organized in relation to generic categories: namely, the tragedies, the histories, the comedies, and the poems, problem comedies and late plays. Brings together new essays from a diverse, international group of scholars. Examines each of Shakespeare s plays and major poems using all the resources of contemporary criticism from performance studies to feminist, historicist, and textual analyses. Complements David Scott Kastan′s A Companion to Shakespeare (1999), which focused on Shakespeare as an author in his historical context. Offers a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies. Review "Whether for the student wishing for an overview of critical approaches or anxious to fill in the gaps in his Shakespearean culture, for those wishing to catch up on the diversity of literary theories, or for the inquisitive browser, this set of volumes assuredly charts the map of current criticism." Cahiers Elisabethains From the Back Cover This four–volume Companion to Shakespeare′s Works, compiled as a single entity, offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism. Complementing David Scott Kastan′s A Companion to Shakespeare (1999), which focused on Shakespeare as an author in his historical context, these volumes examine each of his plays and major poems using all the resources of contemporary criticism from performance studies to feminist, historicist, and textual analyses. Scholars from all over the world – Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and United States – have joined in the writing of new essays addressing virtually the whole of Shakespeare′s canon from a rich variety of critical perspectives. A mixture of younger and more established scholars, their work reflects some of the most interesting research currently being conducted in Shakespeare studies. Arguing for the persistence and utility of genre as a rubric for teaching and writing about Shakespeare′s works, the editors have organized the four volumes in relation to generic categories: namely, the tragedies, the histories, the comedies, and the poems, problem comedies and late plays. Each volume thus contains individual essays on all texts in the relevant category as well as more general essays looking at critical issues and approaches more widely relevant to the genre. This ambitious project offers a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies at the dawning of the twentieth–first century. About the Author Jean E. Howard is William E. Ransford Professor of English at Columbia University and a past president of the Shakespeare Association of America. She is an editor of The Norton Shakespeare, and author of, among other works The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (1994) and, with Phyllis Rackin, of Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare′s English Histories (1997) . Richard Dutton is currently Professor of English at Lancaster University, author of Mastering the Revels: the Regulation and Censorship of Renaissance Drama(1991) and Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England:Buggeswords(2000). He is editor of the Palgrave Literary Lives series. From 2003, he will be Professor of English at Ohio State University.