An introduction to Shakespeare's poems / Peter Hyland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hyland, Peter.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Poetic works.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Venus and Adonis.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Rape of Lucrece.

Lucretia.

Narrative poetry, English--History and criticism.

Narrative poetry, English.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Sonnets.

Sonnets, English--History and criticism.

Sonnets, English.

Adonis (Greek deity)--In literature.

Adonis.

Venus (Roman deity)--In literature.

Venus.

Lucretia--In literature.

Physical Description:

vii, 231 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Summary:

While it is widely acknowledged that Shakespeare is the most important poet to have written in English, most people think of his poetry as the verse that is written in his plays. Apart from a few of the Sonnets, Shakespeare's non-dramatic poems are hardly familiar at all -- yet it is possible that he considered them of greater literary merit than his dramatic works. An Introduction to Shakespeare's Poems provides a lively, informative and up-to-date guide to Shakespeare's non-dramatic poetry, including the two narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, the Sonnets, and various minor poems, some of which have only recently, and controversially, been attributed to the Bard. Peter Hyland locates Shakespeare as a sceptical voice within the turbulent and often hostile Elizabethan market-place in which professional poets had to work, rather than depicting him as a transmitter of elitist principles. Hyland relates the poems to the aesthetic tastes, social values and political concerns of the time, and explores what Shakespeare's poetry has to offer to the twenty-first century reader.

Contents:

1 Shakespeare Becomes a Poet 7

2 Shakespeare and the Literary Marketplace 20

Patronage 24

Shakespeare and Southampton 31

Shakespeare on Court Poetry and Patronage 34

3 The Art of Poetry 42

4 Shakespeare and Ovidian Poetry 55

The Epyllion 55

Shakespeare and Ovid 58

The Texts 64

The Dedications 65

5 Venus and Adonis 67

Some Readers 72

The Reader and the Narrator 76

Myth and Anti-Myth 79

Venus 84

Adonis 90

6 The Rape of Lucrece 96

Readers and Issues 101

Myth and its Uses 105

The Narrator and Patriarchal Values 109

Tarquin 112

Lucrece 117

7 Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Sonnet 125

The Development of the Sonnet 125

Shake-speare's Sonnets 136

8 Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: 1 148

Sonnet 1: A Reading 151

Breeding Immortality 154

Gender-Bending 159

Is Love Love? 162

9 Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: 2 168

The 'Black' Mistress 168

'Will' and the Poet 175

Time's Tyranny and the Poet's Pen 181

Coda: 'A Lover's Complaint' 187

10 Various Poems 194.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 224-227) and index.

ISBN:

0333725921

033372593X

OCLC:

50006634