Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. xxii, 253 pages; 23 cm

Summary

1. What does it mean to have an emotional response to poetry and music? And, just as important but considered less often, what does it mean not to have such a response? What happens when lyric utterances - which should invite consolation, revelation, and connection - somehow fall short of the listener's expectations? As Seth Lerer shows in this pioneering book, Shakespeare's late plays invite us to contemplate that very question, offering up lyric as a displaced and sometimes desperate antidote to situations of duress or powerlessness. Lerer argues that the theme of lyric misalignment running throughout The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Henry VIII, and Cymbeline serves a political purpose, a last-ditch effort at transformation for characters and audiences who had lived through witch-hunting, plague, regime change, political conspiracies, and public executions. A deep dive into the relationship between aesthetics and politics, this book also explores what Shakespearean lyric is able to recuperate for these "victims of history" by virtue of its disjointed utterances. To this end, Lerer establishes the concept of mythic lyricism: an estranging use of songs and poetry that functions to recreate the past as present, to empower the mythic dead, and to restore a bit of magic to the commonplaces and commodities of Jacobean England. Reading against the devotion to form and prosody common in Shakespeare scholarship, Lerer's account of lyric utterance's vexed role in his late works offers new ways to understand generational distance and cultural change throughout the playwright's oeuvre.

Subject

1. Music and literature
2. English drama
3. Dramatic monologues
4. Criticism, interpretation, etc
5. History
6. Technique
7. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 > Technique
8. English drama > 17th century > History and criticism
9. England
10. Music and literature > England > History > 17th century
11. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 > Criticism and interpretation
12. Dramatic monologues > History > 17th century
13. 1600-1699

Genre/Form

1. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
2. History.

Contents

1. Myth, music, and lyric -- An elegy for Ariel -- Poetry and performance in the Winter's Tale -- Pageantry, power, and lyricism in Henry VIII -- Aesthetic judgment and the audience in Cymbeline -- Epilogue: lyric recognition and the editorial romance in Pericles and the Two Noble Kinsmen.

Call number

1. JFD 19-841

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Author

1. Lerer, Seth, 1955- author.

Title

1. Shakespeare's lyric stage : myth, music, and poetry in the last plays / Seth Lerer.

Publisher

1. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2018.

Copyright date

1. ©2018

Type of content

1. text

Type of medium

1. unmediated

Type of carrier

1. volume

Bibliography

1. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological term

1. 1600-1699

LCCN

1. 2018003418

Other standard identifier

1. 40028697324
2. 40028739620

ISBN

1. 9780226582405 hardcover ; alkaline paper
2. 022658240X hardcover ; alkaline paper
3. 9780226582542 paperback ; alkaline paper
4. 022658254X paperback ; alkaline paper
5. 9780226582689 electronic book

Research call number

1. JFD 19-841