Shakespeare's World of Words

Description

Was Shakespeare really the original genius he has appeared to be since the eighteenth century, a poet whose words came from nature itself? The contributors to this volume propose that Shakespeare was not the poet of nature, but rather that he is a genius of rewriting and re-creation, someone able to generate a new language and new ways of seeing the world by orchestrating existing social and literary vocabularies. Each chapter in the volume begins with a key word or phrase from Shakespeare and builds toward a broader consideration of the social, poetic, and theatrical dimensions of his language. The chapters capture well the richness of Shakespeare's world of words by including discussions of biblical language, Latinity, philosophy of language and subjectivity, languages of commerce, criminality, history, and education, the gestural vocabulary of performance, as well as accounts of verbal modality and Shakespeare's metrics. An Afterword outlines a number of other important languages in Shakespeare, including those of law, news, and natural philosophy.

Paul Yachnin is Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI) at McGill University, Canada.

This impressive and wide-ranging volume brings together a variety of perspectives to consider the expansive world of words that unfolds on Shakespeare's stage. One of the most welcome features of Shakespeare's World of Words is its diverse body of contributors. Essays from literary scholars appear alongside those by theater practitioners and performance scholars ... The "opening up" of interpretive possibilities is one of this volume's best gifts. Readers come away with a renewed perspective on the many elements that render Shakespeare's world of words so rich. * Shakespeare Quarterly *