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Lena Cowen Orlin

Auteur de Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide

11+ oeuvres 167 utilisateurs 2 critiques

A propos de l'auteur

Lena Cowen Orlin is Professor of English at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses in Renaissance literature, and she is Executive Director of the Shakespeare Association of America. She is the author of Locating Privacy in Tudor London (2007) and Private Matters and Public Culture in afficher plus Post-Reformation England (1994), editor of Material London, ca. 1600 (2000), and co-editor of Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide (2003). afficher moins
Crédit image: Uncredited photo from National Humanities Center website

Œuvres de Lena Cowen Orlin

Oeuvres associées

The Bedford Shakespeare (2014) 19 exemplaires
A new companion to Renaissance drama (2017) — Contributeur — 9 exemplaires
Shakespeare Studies XXVIII (2000) — Contributeur — 6 exemplaires
Shakespeare on the record : researching an early modern life (2019) — Contributeur — 6 exemplaires

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Partage des connaissances

Sexe
female
Pays (pour la carte)
USA
Organisations
Georgetown University

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Critiques

Wonderful, wonderful, and still more wonderful!

This is, for my money, the most readable, approachable, intelligent introduction to Shakespeare studies that I've yet found. Each of the book's 45 chapters is written by a different scholar, and edited by Stanley Wells and Lena Cowen Orlin. Over the course of this 45 chapters, readers are given a detailed but comprehensive introduction to the headline topics. This includes Shakespeare's life from birth to death; the theatres and culture of his time; how plays were written, performed, and printed; Shakespeare's genres; close readings of several of the plays; performance practice through the ages; some of the main branches of Shakespearean criticism, ranging from post-colonial and feminist to new historicism; Shakespeare on film and in translation; and Shakespeare online. While the last of those categories is hopelessly outdated, the rest remains invaluable.

What the editors get right is that each chapter is written with a scholarly air, rather than presenting "Shakespeare for Dummies!". At the same time, I wish that some of my Penguin or Arden editions chose to include a few of these morsels. The plain-speaking explanation of the difference between iambs, trochees and spondees will be of much use to someone approaching Shakespeare with trepidation. Each chapter also includes a bibliography for suggested reading, which should be able to direct the keen reader to a wealth of knowledge.

Of course, at the end of the day, most chapters are roughly 10 pages long. This is an overview, and a ground-level one at that. But, after all, the joy of Shakespeare is in the discovery. I recommend this book to all - even if you're fairly well-read - as you'll find many avenues to explore in the future.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
Orlin, Lena Cowen, Editor. Material London, Ca. 1600. New Cultural Studies. U of Pennsylvania P, 2000.
Material London, Ca 1600, is a collection of essays from a 1995 conference at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The pieces examine the changing demographics, architecture, fashion, literature, art, and industry in London from 1550-1650. The essays do not represent a unified approach to cultural studies, which is only a problem if you were hoping the book would present a coherent theory of cultural studies. I found the eclectic nature of the collection refreshing. I found myself engrossed in subjects I knew nothing about. For example, in an essay on land ownership and boundary disputes, I discovered that much of the litigation over property had to do with blocking a neighbor’s access to their own building. And there was a lot of talk about sewage. Waste from adjacent buildings often ran together into one into one pit near the buildings. Trouble arose when a house with three or four stools dumped sewage into a pit near a smaller neighbor’s house, who complained about the odor or the chore of cleaning out his neighbor’s waste. Literal eavesdropping was also an issue, because houses were built so close together that one might overhang the other. It is also clear that London had two major sources of population growth, vagrants moving in from the country and foreign tradesmen, often with special skills in such crafts as glassmaking. There was a good deal of ethnic and class prejudice as a result. Finally, I was intrigued to learn how important repurposed church property was to the London book trade. Bishops, it turns out, routinely leased some of the property around rectories and cathedrals for storefronts often associated with the book trade. As a Terry Pratchett fan, reading about London in the 16th and 17th centuries gave me a clear idea of what Pratchett must have been thinking when he created Ankh-Morpork. Waterways were routinely covered up and the city of London was continually rebuilt on top of itself. 4 stars.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
Tom-e | Dec 15, 2021 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
11
Aussi par
5
Membres
167
Popularité
#127,264
Évaluation
½ 4.4
Critiques
2
ISBN
26

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