Foundational Works of 20th Century Shakespeare Criticism
The following links to book chapters and online articles in the Montgomery Library. Some book chapters are online, while others are found in print books on the shelf at the Montgomery Library. Online students may request access to the print materials by contacting JLehtonen@campbellsville.edu or filling out the CU Library Exchange form.
Essay Collections: E-Books and Print Books
Northrop Frye's Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (E-book of essays from 1940-1980s) - Classic articles and book chapters by the preeminent scholar, Northrop Frye.
Modern Shakespearean Criticism: Essays on Style, Dramaturgy, and the Major Plays (Print anthology from 1970) - Classic articles and chapters
Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays (Print anthology from 1980) - Classic articles
Shakespeare's Middle Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays (Print anthology from 1993) - Classic articles by big-name critics.
Shakespeare Reread: The Texts in New Contexts (E-book from 1994) - Essay collection by top scholars responding to 20th century debates around New Criticism and New Historicism in Shakespeare studies.
Foundational Articles / Book Chapters
The list below includes many of the works at the Montgomery Library that are recommended as foundational works in Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000, by Russ McDonald (Editor), as well as other related articles. Some items are book chapters found in print books or e-books.
New Criticism:
The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness (Cleanth Brooks)
Dramatic Genres:
The Argument of Comedy (Northrop Frye)
Introduction: The Saturnalian Pattern (C. L. Barber)
The Jacobean Shakespeare (Maynard Mack)
The 1950s and ’60s: Structure, Theme, Character:
Reflections on The Sentimentalist’s Othello (Barbara Everett)
Form and Formality in Romeo and Juliet (Harry Levin)
King Lear or Endgame (Jan Kott)
How Not To Murder Caesar (Sigurd Burckhardt) - a very engaging read!
Reader-Response Criticism:
On the Value of Hamlet (Stephen Booth).
Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V (Norman Rabkin).
Textual Criticism And Bibliography:
Narratives about Printed Shakespeare Texts: ‘Foul Papers’ and ‘Bad Quartos’ (Paul Werstine)
Psychoanalytic Readings:
‘Anger’s My Meat’: Feeding, Dependency, and Aggression in Coriolanus (Janet Adelman)
The Avoidance Of Love: A Reading Of King Lear (Stanley Cavell)
The Turn of the Shrew (Joel Fineman)
Historicism and New Historicism:
Introductory: The Cosmic Background (E.M.W. Tillyard)
Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion, Henry IV and Henry V (Stephen Greenblatt)
The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies (Jean Howard)
Shaping Fantasies: Figurations if Gender And Power in Elizabethan Culture (Louis Adrian Montrose)
Materialist Criticism:
Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism (Jonathan Dollimore)
"Word Itself against the Word": Close Reading after Voloshinov (James Siemon)
Feminist Criticism:
Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony and Cleopatra Criticism (Linda Woodbridge [L. T. Fitz])
‘I Wooed Thee With My Sword’: Shakespeare’s Tragic Paradigms (Madelon Gohlke)
The Family in Shakespeare Studies; Or—Studies in the Family of Shakespeareans; Or—The Politics of Politics (Lynda E. Boose)
Studies In Gender And Sexuality:
Cultural Politics: Queer Reading (e-book) (Alan Sinfield)
Against the Sink-a-Pace: Sexual and Family Politics in Much Ado about Nothing (Harry Berger)
Performance Criticism:
The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century (J.L. Styan)
Kozintsev's "King Lear": Filming a Tragic Poem (Barbara Hodgdon)
Deeper Meanings and Theatrical Technique: The Rhetoric of Performance Criticism (William Worthen)
Race And Postcolonialism:
Discourse and the Individual: The Case of Colonialism in "The Tempest" (Meredith Anne Skura)
Shakespeare's Indian: The Americanization of Caliban (Alden Vaughan)
After "The Tempest:" Shakespeare, Postcoloniality, and Michelle Cliff's New, New World Miranda (Thomas Cartelli)
Different Shakespeares: The Bard in Colonial/Postcolonial India (Jyotsna Singh)
Caribbean and African Appropriations of "The Tempest" (Rob Nixon)
Reading Closely:
Shakespeare’s Prose. (Jonas Barish).
The Play of Phrase and Line in Shakespeare's Iambic Pentameter (George T. Wright)
Dilation and Delay: Renaissance Matrices (Patricia Parker)