ELIZABETHANS AND GREECE Today, many view ancient Greece, and especially ancient Athens, as the fountainhead of Western civilization. This was not the case for medievals, who knew Greek literature in Latin translations. Though Chaucer set some of his works in ancient Greece (?The Knight?s Tale?E . . . . Continue Reading »
INTRODUCTION Coriolanus is the last of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, and has often been criticized as an inferior piece of work. There have been exceptions: T. S. Eliot said that Coriolanus was one Shakespeare’s most accomplished artistic successes. And in recent years, the critical . . . . Continue Reading »
Following is a set of notes for a lecture given at the Biblical Horizons conference, July 21. I will deliver the same lecture as part of a series on Shakespeare’s Classical World at the NSA Summer Institute next week. Shakespeare’s Classical World INTRODUCTION There are a variety of . . . . Continue Reading »
Robert S. Miola’s article on Shakespeare’s Rome in the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays is superb. Here are a couple of excerpts: ?The spectacle of such bloodshed and death defines Shakespeare?s ancient Romans as other, as deeply alien and strange. But Roman . . . . Continue Reading »
James Woods perceptively notes that the triumph of theory in literary studies is less the triumph of Marx than the triumph of Freud: “One of the decisive changes that theory effected was to introduce the idea that texts do not know themselves. It is the critic’s business to reveal their . . . . Continue Reading »
Writing on Joyce’s Ulysses just before the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, Declan Kiberd notes the oddity of the ending: “the climax of Ulysses is a meeting between two men, the young poet Stephen Dedalus and the older ad-canvasser Leopold Bloom . . . . The meeting of Dedalus and Bloom . . . . Continue Reading »
Edward Oakes offers a fascinating review of several new books on Shakespeare in the June/July issue of First Things . He gives this summary of the recent argument of Stephen Greenblatt concerning Shakespeare’s views on Purgatory: “Shakespeare’s choice of Wittenberg as the palce . . . . Continue Reading »
According to the NB column in the May 28 TLS , the first recorded example of a limerick meter and rhyme occurs in a 13th-century prayer: Si vitiorum meorum evacuatio Concupiscentiae et libidinis exterminatio, Caritatis et patientiae, Humilitatis et obedientiae, Omniumque virtutum augmentatio . As . . . . Continue Reading »
In the May 28 TLS , Peter Brooks reviews Francois Cusset’s French Theory , a study of the American reception of post-structuralism after 1966. The review provides a precis of the story, and includes a number of intriguing insights into the process: First, it is ironic and amusing that the . . . . Continue Reading »
Robert Brunstein, the TNR drama critic, offers this comment on Tom Stoppard: “Like Shaw, Stoppard has always been an omnivorous reader and has never been reluctant to share his scholarship with his audiences. If I still can’t get as excited about his playwriting as my fellow critics . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
