Forensic Shakespeare

di Quentin Skinner (Autore)

Oxford University Press, 2018

Forensic Shakespeare illustrates Shakespeare's creative processes by revealing the intellectual materials out of which some of his most famous works were composed. Focusing on the narrative poem Lucrece, on four of his late Elizabethan plays (Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and Hamlet) and on three early Jacobean dramas, (Othello, Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well), Quentin Skinner argues that major speeches, and sometimes sequences of scenes, are crafted according to a set of rhetorical precepts about how to develop a persuasive judicial case, either in accusation or defence. Some of these works have traditionally been grouped together as 'problem plays', but here Skinner offers a different explanation for their frequent similarities of tone. There have been many studies of Shakespeare's rhetoric, but they have generally concentrated on his wordplay and use of figures and tropes. By contrast, this study concentrates on Shakespeare's use of judicial rhetoric as a method of argument. By approaching the plays from this perspective, Skinner is able to account for some distinctive features of Shakespeare's vocabulary, and also help to explain why certain scenes follow a recurrent pattern and arrangement. More broadly, he is able to illustrate the extent of Shakespeare's engagement with an entire tradition of classical and Renaissance humanist thought.

• Autore: Quentin Skinner
• Editore: Oxford University Press
• Collana: Clarendon Lectures in English
• Anno: 2018
• Rilegatura: Paperback / softback
• Pagine: 368 p.
• Dimensioni: 233 x 154 mm
• Peso: 1 gr.
• EAN: 9780198816430

Testo in English