From Kenneth Branagh’s groundbreaking Henry V to Justin Kurzel’s haunting Macbeth, many modern filmmakers have adapted Shakespeare for the big screen. Their translations of Renaissance plays to modern cinema both highlight and comment on contemporary culture and attitudes to art, identity, and the past. A dynamic analysis of twenty-seven films adapted from Shakespeare’s works, Philippa Sheppard’s Devouring Time addresses a wide range of topics, including gender, ritual, music, setting, rhetoric, and editing. She argues that the directors’ choice to adapt these four-hundred-year-old plays is an act of nostalgia, not only for the plays themselves, but also for the period in which they were written, the association of genius that accompanies them, and the medium of theatre. Sheppard contends that millennial anxiety brought on by the social and technological revolutions of the last five decades has generated a yearning for Shakespeare because he is an icon of a literary culture that is often deemed threatened. Authoritative and accessible, Devouring Time’s investigations of filmmakers’ nostalgia for the art of the past shed light on Western concepts of gender, identity, and colonialism.

The English Studies Book is uniquely designed to support students and teachers working across the full range of language, literature and culture. Combining the functions of study guide, critical dictionary and text anthology, it has rapidly established itself as a core text on a wide variety of degree programmes nationally and internationally. Revised and updated throughout, features of the second edition include: * a new prologue addressing changes and challenges in English Studies * substantial entries on over 100 key critical and theoretical terms, from 'absence' and 'author' to 'text' and 'versification' - with new entries on 'creative writing', 'travel writing' and 'translation' * practical introductions to all the major theoretical approaches, with new sections on aesthetics, ethics, ecology and sexuality * a rich anthology of literary and related texts from Anglo-Saxon to Afro-Caribbean, with fresh selections representing the sonnet, haiku, slave narratives and science fiction, and with additional texts by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Darwin, Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Amy Tan and others * handy frameworks and checklists for close reading, research, essay writing and other textual activities, including use of the Internet.

Helen Vendler, widely regarded as our most accomplished interpreter of poetry, here serves as an incomparable guide to some of the best-loved poems in the English language. In detailed commentaries on Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, Vendler reveals previously unperceived imaginative and stylistic features of the poems, pointing out not only new levels of import in particular lines, but also the ways in which the four parts of each sonnet work together to enact emotion and create dynamic effect. The commentaries—presented alongside the original and modernized texts—offer fresh perspectives on the individual poems, and, taken together, provide a full picture of Shakespeare’s techniques as a working poet. With the help of Vendler’s acute eye, we gain an appreciation of “Shakespeare’s elated variety of invention, his ironic capacity, his astonishing refinement of technique, and, above all, the reach of his skeptical imaginative intent.”

This 14-volume set contains titles originally published between 1926 and 1992. An eclectic mix, this collection examines Shakespeare’s work from a number of different perspectives, looking at history, language, performance and more it includes references to many of his plays as well as his sonnets.

Shakespeare at best answers the needs of a particular generation in one country or another. Those needs vary: directors and actors, audiences and common readers, scholar-teachers and students do not necessarily seek the same aids for understanding. Shakespeare is an international possession, transcending nations, languages and professions. More than the Bible, which competes with the Koran, and with Indian and Chinese religious writings, Shakespeare is unique in the world’s culture, not just in the world’s theatres. Shakespeare’s literary and cultural authority is now so unquestioned that it has taken on an aura of historical inevitability and has enshrined the figure of the solitary author as the standard bearer of literary production. It is all the more important, then, to suggest that Shakespeare had a genius for timing—managing to be born in exactly the right place and at the right time to nourish his particular form of greatness. He regularly demonstrates and celebrates the ideas and ideals of Renaissance humanism, often—even in his tragic plays—presenting characters that embody the principles and ideals of Renaissance humanism, or people of tremendous self-knowledge and wit that are capable of self-expression and the practice of individual freedom. Shakespeare himself can be understood as the ultimate product of Renaissance humanism; he was an artist who openly practised and celebrated with a deep understanding of humanity and an uncanny ability for self-expression.

A bestselling, beautifully designed edition of William Shakespeare’s sonnets and poems, complete with valuable tools for educators. The authoritative edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes: -Full explanatory notes conveniently linked to the text of each sonnet and poem -A brief introduction to each sonnet and poem, providing insight into its possible meaning -An index of first lines -Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the sonnets The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.