Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets

Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets
Author: Don Paterson
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2012-01-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0571263992

Shakespeare's Sonnets are as important and vital today as they were when first published four hundred years ago. Perhaps no collection of verse before or since has so captured the imagination of readers and lovers; certainly no poem has come under such intense critical scrutiny, and presented the reader with such a bewildering number of alternative interpretations. In this illuminating and often irreverent guide, Don Paterson offers a fresh and direct approach to the Sonnets, asking what they can still mean to the twenty-first century reader.In a series of fascinating and highly entertaining commentaries placed alongside the poems themselves, Don Paterson discusses the meaning, technique, hidden structure and feverish narrative of the Sonnets, as well as the difficulties they present for the modern reader. Most importantly, however, he looks at what they tell us about William Shakespeare the lover - and what they might still tell us about ourselves.Full of energetic analysis, plain-English translations and challenging mini-essays on the craft of poetry - not to mention some wild speculation - this approachable handbook to the Sonnets offers an indispensable insight into our greatest Elizabethan writer by one of the leading poets of our own day.

First Readers of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1590-1790

First Readers of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1590-1790
Author: Faith D. Acker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000190811

For more than four centuries, cultural preferences, literary values, critical contexts, and personal tastes have governed readers’ responses to Shakespeare’s sonnets. Early private readers often considered these poems in light of the religious, political, and humanist values by which they lived. Other seventeenth- and eighteenth- century readers, such as stationers and editors, balanced their personal literary preferences against the imagined or actual interests of the literate public to whom they marketed carefully curated editions of the sonnets, often successfully. Whether public or private, however, many disparate sonnet interpretations from the sonnets’ first two centuries in print have been overlooked by modern sonnet scholarship, with its emphasis on narrative and amorous readings of the 1609 sequence. First Readers of Shakespeare’s Sonnets reintroduces many early readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets, arguing that studying the priorities and interpretations of these previous readers expands the modern critical applications of these poems, thereby affording them numerous future applications. This volume draws upon book history, manuscript studies, and editorial theory to recover four lost critical approaches to the sonnets, highlighting early readers’ interests in Shakespeare’s classical adaptations, political applicability, religious themes, and rhetorical skill during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Ideas of Order

Ideas of Order
Author: Neil L. Rudenstine
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-11-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0374280150

"A guide to Shakespeare's sonnets illustrating the narrative underlying the poems"--Publisher information.

Shakespeare's Sonnets

Shakespeare's Sonnets
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-12
Genre: Shakespeare, William
ISBN: 9780198728016

This book is at once an edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets and a guide to how to read these exquisite and complex poems. It is designed both for readers new to the poems and for those who are familiar with the Sonnets but are ready to engage with them afresh. It is the only current edition whichprovides an original-spelling text of the poems: that is, it prints the poems as they appeared in the first edition, Shake-speares Sonnets (1609), preserving the spelling, punctuation, italics, and capitalization of the original, with only minor interventions where that edition manifestly needscorrection. The advantages (and occasional hazards) of reading an original-spelling text are explained, and detailed help is provided in order to assist readers who may be unfamiliar with the conventions of early-modern spelling and punctuation.

Shakespeare & Love Sonnets

Shakespeare & Love Sonnets
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Gramercy
Total Pages: 104
Release: 1999
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780517161074

A selection of sonnets from the works of William Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Daniel, John Donne, John Milton.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Retold

Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Retold
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2018-11-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0753553147

'James Anthony has done something I would have confidently stated to be impossible. He has "translated" Shakespeare’s sonnets and he has done so with an insolent, loveable charm ... A dazzling success’ – Stephen Fry Rediscover the greatest love poetry ever written Shall I compare you to a summer’s day? You’re more delightful, always shining strong; High winds blow hard on flowering buds in May, And summer never seems to last that long... Shakespeare’s sonnets are some of the nation’s favourite lines of verse, but the Elizabethan language can make it difficult to really understand them. Many guides offer to clarify the meaning, but lose the magic of the words by explaining them away. James Anthony has done something boldly different. He has rewritten the whole series of poems as sonnets using modern language, while retaining the rhythm and rhyme patterns that gives them such power. In doing so he breathes new life into the original poems and opens them up for a modern readership, demystifying Shakespeare’s eternal poetry with provocative new translations and delightful new lines. Presented as an attractive book with the original sonnets facing their new translations, this is a stunning collection of beautiful love poems, made new.

Shakespeare's Sonnets amd Poems

Shakespeare's Sonnets amd Poems
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 611
Release: 2015-11-24
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1501128876

A bestselling, beautifully designed edition of William Shakespeare’s sonnets and poems, complete with valuable tools for educators. The authoritative edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes: -Full explanatory notes conveniently linked to the text of each sonnet and poem -A brief introduction to each sonnet and poem, providing insight into its possible meaning -An index of first lines -Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the sonnets The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

Reading Shakespeare’s Poems in Early Modern England

Reading Shakespeare’s Poems in Early Modern England
Author: S. Roberts
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2002-11-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0230286844

This is the first comprehensive study of early modern texts, readings, and readers of Shakespeare's poems in print and manuscript, Reading Shakespeare's Poems in Early Modern England makes a compelling contribution both to Shakespeare studies and the history of the book. Examining gendered readerships and the use of erotic works, reading practises and manuscript culture, textual forms and transmission, literary taste and the canonisation of Shakespeare, this book argues that historicist criticism can no longer ignore histories of reading.