Troilus and Cressida: A Critical Reader

Troilus and Cressida: A Critical Reader offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this complex problem play, surveying its key themes and evolving critical preoccupations. Considering its generic ambiguity and experimentalism, it also provides a uniquely detailed and up-to-date history of the play''s stage performance from Dryden''s rewriting up to Mark Ravenhill and Elizabeth LeCompte''s controversial 2012 production for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Wooster Group. Moving through to four new critical essays, the guide opens up fresh perspectives on the play''s iconoclastic nature and its key themes, ranging from issues of gender and sexuality to Elizabethan politics, from the uses of antiquity to questions of cultural translation, with particular attention paid on Troilus'' "Greekness". The volume finishes with a helpful guide to critical and web-based resources. Discussing the ways in which this challenging and acerbic play can be brought to life in the classroom, it suggests performance-based strategies, designed to engage with the dramaturgical and theatrical dimensions of the text; close-reading exercises with an emphasis on rhetoric, metaphor and the practice of "troping"; and a series of tools designed to situate the play in a range of contexts, including its classical and critical frameworks.>

About the author

Efterpi Mitsi is Associate Professor in English Literature and Culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Andrew Hiscock is Professor of English at Bangor University, UK. 

Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at University of Sheffield Hallam. She has published numerous works on Shakespeare including her most recent work, Beginning Shakespeare (2005) and has written on film adaptations including Screening the Gothic. She is the Senior Editor of the online journal, Early Modern Literary Studies.

Product details

• Authors: Andrew Hiscock, Lisa Hopkins, Efterpi Mitsi, Efterpi (National and Kapodistrian Universi Mitsi
• Assisted by: Andrew Hiscock (Editor), Lisa Hopkins (Editor), Efterpi Mitsi (Editor), Efterpi (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Mitsi (Editor), Mitsi Efterpi (Editor), Andrew Hiscock (Editor of the series), Lisa Hopkins (Editor of the series)
• Publisher: Arden shakespeare
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.01.2019
• EAN: 9781350014190
• ISBN: 978-1-350-01419-0
• No. of pages: 304
• Series: Arden Early Modern Drama Guides; Arden Early Modern Drama Guide; Arden Early Modern Drama Guides; Arden Early Modern Drama Guide
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama, Literary studies: general, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Shakespeare Studies & Criticism, Literary studies: plays and playwrights