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List of contents
Series editor’s preface
Preface
Introduction - the language of genre
What is a winter’s tale?
The Winter’s Tale and comedy
The Winter’s Tale and tragedy
Sources, intertexts, allusions
Writing matters
1 Engaging the language of the text(s)
The texts of The Winter’s Tale
Listening to the language of the opening scene
Editorial interventions: Spelling, capitalization, punctuation
Editorial additions: Stage directions
Fallen language in The Winter’s Tale
Writing Matters
2 Language: Style and form
Prose, verse and rhyme
Analyzing Shakespeare’s blank verse
Soliloquies
Hermione’s oration
Reporting
Writing matters
3 Language and history
Women’s speech and authority
Obedience and resistance
Festive pleasures, festive dangers
Faith, magic and art: The statue scene
Writing matters
4 Writing and language skills
Choosing an essay topic I
Choosing an essay topic II: Creative approaches
Writing the essay
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Mario DiGangi is Professor of English at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA. He is the author of The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama (1997) and Sexual Types: Embodiment, Agency, and Dramatic Character from Shakespeare to Shirley (2011) and has edited three plays of Shakespeare: The Winter’s Tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet.Dympna Callaghan is William L. Safire Professor of Modern Letters in the Department of English at Syracuse University. She has published widely on the playwrights and poets of the English Renaissance and was President of the Shakespeare Association of America in 2012-13. Callaghan has held fellowships at the Folger, Huntington and Newberry Libraries, at the Getty Research Centre in Los Angeles, and, most recently, at the Bogliasco Center for Arts and Humanities in Liguria, Italy.
Summary
Through expert guidance on understanding, interpreting, and writing about Shakespeare’s language, this book makes The Winter’s Tale accessible and exciting for students. It demonstrates that careful attention to Shakespeare’s complex dramatic language can clarify the structure and concerns of the play, as well as provide deep and satisfying engagement with the social, political and ethical questions Shakespeare raises. Each chapter features a 'Writing Matters' section designed to connect analysis of Shakespeare’s language to students’ development of their own writing strategies. The book examines topics in the play such as tragicomic genre; women’s assertion of social and political agency; obedience and resistance to rulers; the virtues and risks of following festivity, and disputes over the proper forms of religious devotion.
Foreword
This book examines topics in the play, such as tragicomic genre; women’s assertion of social and political agency; obedience and resistance to rulers; the virtues and risks of festivity, and disputes over the proper forms of religious devotion.
