Shakespeare and the Book
Shakespeare and the Book
$57.00
USDThis book is a authoritative account of Shakespeare's plays as they were transformed from scripts to be performed into books to be read, and eventually from popular entertainment into the centerpieces of the English literary canon. Kastan examines the motives and activities of Shakespeare's first publishers; the curious eighteenth-century schizophrenia that saw Shakespeare radically modified on stage at the very moment that scholars were working to establish and restore the "genuine" texts, and the exhilarating possibilities of electronic media for presenting Shakespeare now to new generations of readers. This is an important contribution to Shakespearean textual scholarship, to the history of the early English book trade, and to the theory of drama itself.
- An important contribution to Shakespearean textual scholarship - it recovers the motives and activities of those early publishers who first brought Shakespeare into print
- A profound rethinking of the relationship between print and performance
- A thorough account of the new electronic technologies of print
Reviews & endorsements
"Lively and readable...Kastan's book is an excellent survey and would be particularly useful as a text for advanced undergraduates or graduate students." Shakespeare Quarterly
"A timely work...four finely crafted and beautifully written essays that are at the same time erudite and accessible." Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England
"A thoughtful elegantly conceived and elegantly written series of meditations on the traffic of the book trade." Studies in English Literature
"Kastan's travels through the history of Shakespeare's
ghostly textual presence will inform the neophyte, provoke the expert, and entertain all." Notes and Queries
"Deserves the attention of all students of Shakespeare, and all book lovers." Zeitschrift fuer Anglistik und Amerikanistik
"Kastan excels when he deals with hypertexts...Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." Choice
Product details
October 2001Paperback
9780521786515
184 pages
217 × 139 × 12 mm
0.298kg
24 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. From playhouse to printing house: or, making a good impression
- 3. From quarto to folio: or, size matters
- 4. From contemporary to classic: or, textual healing
- 5. From codex to computer: or, presence of mind.
