Understanding Romeo and Juliet: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents (The Greenwood Press "Literature in Context" Series) - Hardcover

Hager, Alan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0313296162 ISBN 13: 9780313296161

Publisher: Greenwood, 1999

Synopsis

The tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet has touched the hearts of young and old for nearly four hundred years. In this work, Alan Hager has compiled a rich collection of primary materials and contemporary ranging from information about the earliest performances of Romeo and Juliet to discussions of suicide in the 1990s. Designed to help students of the play, Understanding Romeo and Juliet highlights many different aspects of the play's context. Such aspects include a discussion about religions of love in the East and West, and examination of vendetta and collective violence, and an analysis of the play in the context of classical and medieval thought. Hager relates the work to issues as recent as the so-called Werther Syndrome (copycat suicide based on fictional models) and as remote as the notion of reincarnated love such as that of Rama and Sita in the Sanskrit epic Ramayana.

Following a literary analysis of the play, the casebook provides commentary and primary documents on the narrative backgrounds and sources of the play and selections from those sources; a discussion of its performance history on stage, in opera and film; the historical context of the play as an exploration of the nature of love, with selections from poetry of the period; and selections on real-life parallels, such as present-day Bosnia, the recent Leonardo DiCaprio-Claire Danes film of the play, and teen suicide in the 1990s, all of which will help readers to relate to the play. Each section of the work closes with topics for class discussion and papers and suggested works for further reading.

About this title

About the Author

ALAN HAGER is Professor of English at the State University of New York at Cortland and author of Major Tudor Authors: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Greenwood, 1997).

Reviews

Grade 10 Up-Hager begins his analysis of the well-known play by touching on such concepts as love, vendetta, and contrariety (a juxtaposition of opposing ideas). He then explores the background of the play, narrative influences (such as the Greek story of Pyramus and Thisbe and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde), the primary narrative source (Arthur Brooke's The Tragedy of Romeus and Juliet), and lyrical sources such as the poetry of Philip Sidney. The second half of the book looks at the performance history of the play, its historical context, and 1990s interpretations and analogies. Each chapter ends with a section of study questions, discussion or research topics, and a bibliography. There is a substantial glossary. While the book contains many nuggets of useful information and a glimpse at several original sources, it is not easy to use and many discussions require previous knowledge of the subject. The prose is often rambling, the organization tends to be muddy, and some of the material is either arcane or irrelevant (the reprint of a puff piece on Claire Danes, who played Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's film William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, for example). As a tool for reports, Hager's book lacks the focus and clarity of Don Nardo's Readings on Romeo and Juliet (Greenhaven, 1997). An additional choice for larger collections.
Sally Margolis, Barton Public Library, VT
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Greenwood
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0313296162
• ISBN 13: 9780313296161
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264