Volpone: A critical guide

Description

A comprehensive introduction to Ben Jonson's Volpone - introducing its critical history, performance history, current critical landscape and new directions in research on the play.

Matthew Steggle is Reader in English at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He is editor of the ejournal Early Modern Literary Studies, and a Contributing Editor to The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson.

...offers the most wide-ranging and thought-provoking overview of Jonson's comedy ever assembled. It considers the play both as a literary text and as a performance piece, covering its history on the stage and in critical commentary, and so illuminating the current state of scholarship on this most provocative and ambiguous of plays. The well-balanced essays are not afraid to disagree with each other and repeatedly point us towards exciting new questions about a play which is all too often castrated by being labelled a "classic". It will be of value to scholars, teachers and students alike. Future study of Volpone starts here. * Richard Dutton, Humanities Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of English, Ohio State University, USA * Matthew Steggle's collection of critical essays deals perspicaciously with many of the painful questions that linger about Ben Jonson's most popular play...Steggle's collection confirms the power and wit of Jonson's most enduring stage comedy. -- Byron Nelson, West Virginia University * The Sixteenth Century Journal *