The Life in the Sonnets (Shakespeare Now!): Reading and Performance - Hardcover

Fuller, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847064531 ISBN 13: 9781847064530

Publisher: Continnuum-3PL, 2011

Synopsis

Current norms of literary criticism tend to ignore ways in which literary experiences relate to life experience, and some ways in which literary experiences can be intensified and deepened. In this vibrant and controversial book, David Fuller seeks to recover the life in Shakespeare's sonnets, arguing that feeling and emotion, often ignored in criticism, should be central. He offers two ways of attempting this - first engaging with the poems through kinds of feeling fundamental to the young man sequence as presented in other kinds of writing and art - philosophy (Plato), poetry and visual art (Michelangelo), fiction (Mann), music (Britten), and film (Jarman). He then discusses reading the poems aloud, showing that dwelling in the words without translating them into other terms brings out their beauty and expressivity, and leads to fuller understanding of their form, structure, and meaning.

About this title

Review:

"The ambitious project of the "Shakespeare NOW "series is to bridge the gap between 'scholarly thinking and a public audience' and 'public audience and scholarly thinking'. Scholars are encouraged to write in a way accessible to a general readership and readers to rise to the challenge and not be afraid of new ideas and the adventure they offer. There are other bridges the series is ambitious to cross: 'formal, political or theoretical boundaries' - history and philosophy, theory, and performance."
"English Vol. 58, 2009"

'This is a passionate book: a book about passion in literature, passion for literature, and passion in critical writing. David Fuller reminds us of the emotional and sensual pleasures of poetry and reintroduces terms such as "enjoyment," "engagement" and "feeling" to our critical vocabularies. This book will deepen the reader's engagement not just with Shakespeare's sonnets but with all kinds of art - written, acoustic and visual - as Fuller shows us how to bring personal experience to bear on critical analysis.'--Sanford Lakoff

About the Author:

David Fuller is Emeritus Professor of English in the University of Durham, UK. From 2002 to 2007 he was the University's Orator. He trained as a musicologist, and has written on a range of literary topics from Medieval to Modern. He is the author of Blake's Heroic Argument (1988), James Joyce's 'Ulysses' (1992), Signs of Grace (with David Brown, 1995). He has edited Tamburlaine the Great (1998) for the Clarendon Press complete works of Marlowe, co-edited (with Patricia Waugh) The Arts and Sciences of Criticism (OUP, 1999), and edited Blake: Selected Poetry and Prose (Longman, 2000, 2008).

About this edition

• Publisher: Continnuum-3PL
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1847064531
• ISBN 13: 9781847064530
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 134