Shakespeare's Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeare Sources (Student Shakespeare Library) - Softcover

Gillespie, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826477755 ISBN 13: 9780826477750

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2005

Synopsis

This encyclopedia-style Dictionary is a comprehensive reference guide to Shakespeare's literary knowledge and recent scholarship on it. Nearly 200 entries cover the full range of literary writing Shakespeare was acquainted with, and which influenced his own work, including classical, historical, religious and contemporary works. It provides an overview of his use of authors such as Virgil, Chaucer, Erasmus, Marlowe and Samuel Daniel, whose influence is across the canon. Other entries cover anonymous or collective works such as the Bible, Emblems, Homilies, Chronicle History plays and the Morality tradition in drama. Entries cover writers and works whose importance to Shakespeare has emerged more clearly in recent years due to new research. Others describe and explain current thinking on long-recognized sources such as Plutarch, Ovid, Holinshed, Ariosto and Montaigne. Entries for all major sources, over 80 in number, feature surveys of the writer's place in Shakespeare's time, detailed dicussion of the relationship to Shakespeare's plays and poems, and full bibliography. Sample passages from writers and texts of early modern England allow the volume to be used also as a reader in the literature commonly known in Shakespeare's era; these excerpts, together with reproductions of pages and illustrations from the original texts, convey the flavor of the material as Shakespeare would have encountered it.

About this title

About the Author

Stuart Gillespie is Reader in English Literature at the University of Glasgow, and editor of the journal Translation and Literature.

Reviews

A specialized Shakespeare title originally published in hardback is now available in more affordable paperback as part of the Student Shakespeare Library series, which also incudes Shakespeare's Theatre: A Dictionary of His Stage Context. Shakespeare's Books is an alphabetically arranged dictionary of almost 200 entries on more than 80 major sources that influenced Shakespeare's work. Entries are made up of authors (Virgil, Chaucer); works (the Bible); or genres (Homilies); and entry length varies according to the importance of its influence on Shakespeare's work. The longer entries have four sections: a brief biographical or historical description, an assessment of its reputation in Renaissance England, a discussion of the nature of the influence on Shakespeare, and a bibliography pointing to sources chronicling Shakespeare's use of the author or text. Entries include standard sources of influence on Shakespeare as well as more recent discoveries of texts associated with the Bard. Ten black-and-white figures supplement the text, and there is a general bibliography and index. The index, however, does not include plays, which severely limits the usefulness of this otherwise well-designed book.

Recommended for large academic research libraries or specialized literary collections. Susan Gardner
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0826477755
• ISBN 13: 9780826477750
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544