Shakespeare and Millennial Fiction

Description

How do writers of contemporary fiction incorporate Shakespeare - the man, his work and his cultural legacy? This collection brings together some of the leading voices in the scholarship of Shakespearean adaptation and appropriation to examine the ways in which writers have used literary culture's most prominent historical figure to their own ends since the year 2000. The essays consider the representation of the man himself, the rethinking of his stories - often in pointed defiance of the original - and explorations of the plays radically repositioned in time and space. In the process the collection reveals which versions of Shakespeare are most current in contemporary culture and education, even as they remake them in the terms of the present, often exploiting the new notions of genre, of publishing technologies, and of political identity which have evolved so drastically since the turn of the last century.

Andrew James Hartley is the Robinson Professor of Shakespeare studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Central Lancashire. His previous works have focused on theatre theory and practice, and include The Shakespearean Dramaturg (2005), Shakespeare and Political Theatre in Practice (2013), Julius Caesar (Shakespeare in Performance) (2014) and Shakespeare on the University Stage (Cambridge, 2014). He is also the author of sixteen novels for adults and children several with Shakespearean connections. For a decade Professor Hartley was editor of the performance journal, Shakespeare Bulletin and the resident dramaturg for Georgia Shakespeare.