Shakespeare and Childhood
Shakespeare and Childhood
Susanne Greenhalgh, Roehampton University, London
Robert Shaughnessy, University of Kent, Canterbury
This 2007 collection offered the first definitive study of a surprisingly underdeveloped area of scholarly investigation, namely the relationship between Shakespeare, children and childhood from Shakespeare's time to the present. It offers a thorough mapping of the domain in which Shakespearean childhoods need to be studied, in order to show how studying Shakespearean childhoods makes significant contributions both to Shakespearean scholarship, and to the history of childhood and its representations. The book is divided into two sections, each with a substantial introduction outlining relevant critical debates and contextualizing the rich combination of fresh research and readings of familiar Shakespearean texts that characterize the individual essays. The first part of the book examines the significance of the figure of the child in the Shakespearean canon. The second part traces the rich histories of negotiation, exchange and appropriation that have characterised Shakespeare's subsequent relations to the cultures of childhood in literary realms.
- Offers the first thorough and wide-ranging academic study of the relationship between Shakespeare and childhood
- Includes a complete annotated list of child characters in Shakespeare
- Contains a comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary works in the field
Reviews & endorsements
Review of the hardback: 'Shakespeare and Childhood is a collection of essays which makes an important intervention in Shakespearean scholarship … The volume is a solid engagement with the changing dimensions in Shakespearean scholarship …' Shravika Damunupola, PhD Candidate, English and American Studies, The University of Manchester
Review of the hardback: 'This richly detailed volume is a welcome addition to a growing recognition of the significant relations between children's literature and canonical writing for adults. … a salient feature of Shakespeare and Childhood is the raising of questions and suggestions for further research. The editors have prepared the way with two appendices: Mark Lawhorn's 'Children in Shakespeare's plays: an annotated checklist' and 'Bibliography of Shakespeare and childhood in English,' prepared by Kate Chedgzoy and Susanne Greenhalgh with Edel Lamb. Anyone who wants to pursue the topic would find these an enormously helpful starting point, as is the case with the articles. I will certainly refer to this book frequently and appreciatively.' Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen
Product details
February 2011Paperback
9780521182843
298 pages
229 × 152 × 16 mm
0.4kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction Robert Shaughnessy
- Part I. Shakespeare's Children:
- 2. Introduction: 'What, are they children?' Kate Chedgzoy
- 3. Little princes: Shakespeare's royal children in context Catherine Belsey
- 4. Father-child identification, loss, and gender in Shakespeare's plays Hattie Fletcher and Marianne Novy
- 5. Character building: Shakespeare's children in context A. J. Piesse
- 6. Coriolanus and the Little Eyases: the boyhood of Shakespeare's hero Lucy Munro
- 7. Procreation, child-loss, and the gendering of the sonnet Patricia Phillippy
- Part II. Children's Shakespeares:
- 8. Introduction: reinventing Shakespearean childhoods Susanne Greenhalgh
- 9. Play's the thing: agency in children's Shakespeares Naomi J. Miller
- 10. Shakespeare in the Victorian children's periodicals Kathryn Prince
- 11. Growing up with Shakespeare: the memoirs of the Terry family Pascale Aebischer
- 12. Shakespeare in the company of boys Kate Chedgzoy
- 13. Dream children: staging and screening childhood in A Midsummer Night's Dream Susanne Greenhalgh
- 14. Shakespeare (')tween media and markets in the 1990s and beyond Richard Burt
- 15. Appendix I. Shakespeare's child characters Mark Lawhorn
- 16. Appendix II: bibliography of Shakespeare and childhood.
