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The 'Sound of Shakespeare' reveals the surprising extent to which Shakespeare's art is informed by the various attitudes, beliefs, practices and discourses that pertained to sound and hearing in his culture.
In this engaging study, Wes Folkerth develops listening as a critical practice, attending to the ways in which Shakespeare's plays express their author's awareness of early modern associations between sound and particular forms of ethical and aesthetic experience. Through readings of the acoustic representation of deep subjectivity in Richard III, of the 'public ear' in Antony and Cleopatra, the receptive ear in Coriolanus, the grotesque ear in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the 'greedy ear' in Othello, and the 'willing ear' in Measure for Measure, Folkerth demonstrates that by listening to Shakespeare himself listening, we derive a fuller understanding of why his works continue to resonate so strongly with is today.
List of contents
General Editor's Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Something of the Ripe Old Sounds The Shakespearean Sounsdcape 1. Shakespearience: Culture and Soundxtuality; Sounding Out Deep Subjectivity 2. The Public Ear: The Public Ear in Antony and Cleopatra ; The Doctrine is Sound; One of the Subtilist Pieces of Nature; An Explication of Certain Hard Problems about the Ears; And This is the True Manner of Hearing 3. Receptivity: Hearing in Shakespearean Cognition; The Receptive Ear in Coriolanus 4. Transformation and Continuity: Woordes with the Ground; A Reasonable Good Ear in A Midsummer Night's Dream ; The Grotesque Ear; Sound Economics: Excess, Surfeit, Stealing, Giving 5. Shakespearean Acoustemologies: The Greedy Ear in Othello ; The Willing Ear in Measure for Measure ; Then Play On Notes Bibliography Index
About the author
Wes Folkerth is an Assistant Professor of English at McGill University.
Summary
This book is about the role of sound in Shakespeare¹s art, about how he heard the world around him, and about what it means for us to listen to him.
