Rome and Rhetoric: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

Garry Wills

ISBN 10: 0300152183 / ISBN 13: 9780300152180

Published by Yale University Press, 2011

About this Item

First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Yale University Press, 2011. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is like new. Dust jacket is like new.100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Rome and Rhetoric: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300152183
• ISBN 13: 9780300152180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Like New
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

Renaissance plays and poetry in England were saturated with the formal rhetorical twists that Latin education made familiar to audiences and readers. Yet a formally educated man like Ben Jonson was unable to make these ornaments come to life in his two classical Roman plays. Garry Wills, focusing his attention on Julius Caesar, here demonstrates how Shakespeare so wonderfully made these ancient devices vivid, giving his characters their own personal styles of Roman speech.

In four chapters, devoted to four of the play’s main characters, Wills shows how Caesar, Brutus, Antony, and Cassius each has his own take on the rhetorical ornaments that Elizabethans learned in school. Shakespeare also makes Rome present and animate by casting his troupe of experienced players to make their strengths shine through the historical facts that Plutarch supplied him with. The result is that the Rome English-speaking people carry about in their minds is the Rome that Shakespeare created for them. And that is even true, Wills affirms, for today’s classical scholars with access to the original Roman sources.

About the Author

Garry Wills is professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Wills is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and other publications.