Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure
Bringing such proocative and iconoclastic insights to bear on Shakespeare, Girard reveals the previously overlooked coherence of problem plays like Troilus and Cressida, and makes a convincing argument for elevating A Midsummer Night's Dream from the status of a chaotic comedy to a masterpiece. The book abounds with novel and provocative interpretations: Shakespeare becomes "a prophet of modern advertising," and the threat of nuclear disaster is read in the light of Hamlet. Most intriguing of all, perhaps, is a brief, but brilliant aside in which an entirely new perspective is brought to the chapter on Joyce's Ulysses in which Stephen Dedalus gives a lecture on Shakespeare. In Girard's view only Joyce, perhaps the greatest of twentieth-century novelists, comes close to understanding the greatest of Renaissance playwrights.
Throughout this impressively sustained reading of Shakespeare, Girard's prose is sophisticated, but contemporary, and accessible to the general reader.
Country | USA |
Brand | St. Augustines Press |
Manufacturer | St. Augustines Press |
Binding | Paperback |
ItemPartNumber | unknown |
UnitCount | 1 |
EANs | 9781587318603 |
ReleaseDate | 0000-00-00 |