How the classics made Shakespeare / Jonathan Bate.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bate, Jonathan, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

E. H. Gombrich lecture series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Classical literature--Influence.

Classical literature.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xiv, 361 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2019.

Summary:

Ben Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having "small Latin and less Greek." But he was exaggerating. Shakespeare was steeped in the classics. Shaped by his grammar school education in Roman literature, history, and rhetoric, he moved to London, a city that modeled itself on ancient Rome. He worked in a theatrical profession that had inherited the conventions and forms of classical drama, and he read deeply in Ovid, Virgil, and Seneca. In a book of extraordinary range, acclaimed literary critic and biographer Jonathan Bate, one of the world's leading authorities on Shakespeare, offers groundbreaking insights into how, perhaps more than any other influence, the classics made Shakespeare the writer he became. Revealing in new depth the influence of Cicero and Horace on Shakespeare and finding new links between him and classical traditions, ranging from myths and magic to monuments and politics, Bate offers striking new readings of a wide array of the plays and poems. At the heart of the book is an argument that Shakespeare's supreme valuation of the force of imagination was honed by the classical tradition and designed as a defense of poetry and theater in a hostile world of emergent Puritanism. Rounded off with a fascinating account of how Shakespeare became our modern classic and has ended up playing much the same role for us as the Greek and Roman classics did for him, How the Classics Made Shakespeare combines stylistic brilliance, accessibility, and scholarship, demonstrating why Jonathan Bate is one of our most eminent and readable literary critics.

Contents:

1 The Intelligence of Antiquity p. 1

2 O'er-Picturing Venus p. 21

3 Resemblance by Example p. 36

4 Republica Anglorum p. 48

5 Tragical-Comical-Historical-Pastoral p. 64

6 S.P.Q.L. p. 90

7 But What of Cicero? p. 106

8 Pyrrhus's Pause p. 126

9 The Good Life p. 146

10 The Defence of Phantasms p. 160

11 An Infirmity Named Hereos p. 185

12 The Labours of Hercules p. 210

13 Walking Shadows p. 232

14 In the House of Fame p. 252.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0691161607

9780691161600

OCLC:

1051136371