E-Book Overview
Why would Elizabethan audiences find Shakespeare's Porter inMacbethso funny? And what exactly is meant by the name the 'Weird' Sisters? Jonathan Hope, in a comprehensive and fascinating study, looks at how the concept of words meant something entirely different to Elizabethan audiences than they do to us today. InShakespeare and Language: Reason, Eloquence and Artifice in the Renaissance, he traces the ideas about language that separate us from Shakespeare. Our understanding of 'words', and how they get their meanings, based on a stable spelling system and dictionary definitions, simply does not hold. Language in the Renaissance was speech rather than writing - for most writers at the time, a 'word' was by definition a collection of sounds, not letters - and the consequences of this run deep. They explain our culture's inability to appreciate Shakespeare's wordplay, and suggest that a rift opened up in the seventeenth century as language came to be regarded as essentially 'written'. The book also considers the visual iconography of language in the Renaissance, the influence of the rhetorical tradition, the extent to which Shakespeare's late style is driven by a desire to increase the subjective content of the text, and new ways of studying Shakespeare's language using computers. As such it will be of great interest to all serious students and teachers of Shakespeare. Despite the complexity of its subject matter, the book is accessibly written with an undergraduate readership in mind.
E-Book Content
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THE ARDE N S HA KE S P E A RE L IB RA RY
Shakespeare and Language
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THE ARDE N S HA KE S P E A RE L IB RA RY
SHAKESPEARE AND LANGUAGE Reason, Eloquence and Artifice in the Renaissance JONATHAN HOPE
Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LON DON • N E W DE L H I • N E W YOR K • SY DN EY
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Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as Arden Shakespeare 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK
1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA
www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in 2010 by Methuen Drama © Jonathan Hope 2010 Jonathan Hope has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-9042-7169-7 ePDF: 978-1-4081-4374-2 ePub: 978-1-4081-4375-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
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