The Ghost Behind the Masks: The Victorian Poets and Shakespeare (Victorian Literature & Culture (Hardcover)) (Victorian Literature and Culture Series) - Hardcover

Shaw, W. David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081393544X ISBN 13: 9780813935447

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 2014

Synopsis

In The Ghost behind the Masks, W. David Shaw traces Shakespeare’s influence on nine Victorian poets: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Algernon Swinburne, Arthur Hugh Clough, and George Meredith. Often, he writes, the transparency of Shakespeare's influence on Victorian poets and the degree of their engagement with Shakespeare exist in inverse ratio. Instead of imitating a play by Shakespeare or merely quoting his lines, a Victorian poet may embrace more elusive elements of rhetoric and style, adapting them to his or her own ends.

Shaw argues that the most Shakespearean attribute of the Victorian poets is not their addiction to any particular trope or figure of speech but their reticence, the classical restraint of their great monologues, and their sudden descent from grandeur to simplicity. He explores such topics as man-made law versus natural right, Stoic fatalism versus self-reliance, and the sanity of lunatics, lovers, and poets versus the madness of commonplace minds.

About this title

Review:

This book is just what one would expect from a scholar like David Shaw, who has for many decades been one of our most consistently penetrating critics of Victorian poetry: it is learned, illuminating, and frequently profound. The book makes a valuable and truly original contribution to our understanding not only of major Victorian poets but of Shakespeare.

--Erik Gray, Columbia University, author of Milton and the Victorians

Shaw's erudite and finely attuned ear discerns the ghostliest of Shakespearean resonances in subtle close readings of seven Victorian poets.

--David G. Riede, Ohio State University

Shaw's book builds on the important, much-explored theme of literary connections between and appropriations of Shakespeare's work by Victorian poets.... [T]he inclusion of Hopkins and Clough... proves particularly refreshing. This book is of interest to scholars of the Shakespearean canon and... a helpful addition to the study of Victorian literature.

--Vict. Inst. Journal

About the Author:

W. David Shaw, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Toronto, Canada and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is the author of numerous books, most recently Secrets of the Oracle: A History of Wisdom from Zeno to Yeats.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 081393544X
• ISBN 13: 9780813935447
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288