Shakespeare's Englishes
Against Englishness
Seiten
2021
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
978-1-108-72546-0 (ISBN)
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
978-1-108-72546-0 (ISBN)
This urgent and original book shows how Shakespeare's early comedies and the second tetralogy of history plays resist an emergent exclusionary idea of (the) 'true' English with its attendant violence towards others, proposing rather an inclusive idea of 'our English'.
Whose English is 'true' English? What is its relation to the national character? These were urgent questions in Shakespeare's England just as questions of language and identity are today. Through close readings of early comedies and history plays, this study demonstrates how Shakespeare resists the shaping of ideas of the English language and national character by Protestant Reformation ideology. Tudeau-Clayton argues this ideology promoted the notional temperate and honest citizen, plainly spoken and plainly dressed, as the normative centre of (the) 'true' English. Compelling studies of two symmetrical pairs of cultural memes: 'the King's English' versus 'the gallimaufry' and 'the true-born Englishman' versus the 'Fantastical Gull', demonstrate how 'the traitor' came to be defined as much by non-conformity to cultural 'habits' as by allegiance to the monarch. Tudeau-Clayton cogently argues Shakespeare subverted this narrow, class-inflected concept of English identity, proposing instead an inclusive, mixed and unlimited community of 'our English'.
Whose English is 'true' English? What is its relation to the national character? These were urgent questions in Shakespeare's England just as questions of language and identity are today. Through close readings of early comedies and history plays, this study demonstrates how Shakespeare resists the shaping of ideas of the English language and national character by Protestant Reformation ideology. Tudeau-Clayton argues this ideology promoted the notional temperate and honest citizen, plainly spoken and plainly dressed, as the normative centre of (the) 'true' English. Compelling studies of two symmetrical pairs of cultural memes: 'the King's English' versus 'the gallimaufry' and 'the true-born Englishman' versus the 'Fantastical Gull', demonstrate how 'the traitor' came to be defined as much by non-conformity to cultural 'habits' as by allegiance to the monarch. Tudeau-Clayton cogently argues Shakespeare subverted this narrow, class-inflected concept of English identity, proposing instead an inclusive, mixed and unlimited community of 'our English'.
Margaret Tudeau-Clayton is Professor of Early Modern Literature at the Université de Neuchatel, Switzerland.
1. Introduction: Shakespeare and cultural reformation ideology; 2. Shakespeare and 'the King's English': language, history, power; 3. Shakespeare and 'the true-born Englishman': 'theatre' and the ideology of national character; 4. 'they bring in straing rootes': Shakespeare and 'the straingers case'; 5. Figures and parables of a 'straing' word: Shakespeare's 'extravagancy'.
Erscheinungsdatum | 20.09.2021 |
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Zusatzinfo | Worked examples or Exercises; 1 Tables, black and white; 3 Halftones, black and white |
Verlagsort | Cambridge |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 151 x 228 mm |
Gewicht | 384 g |
Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte | |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
ISBN-10 | 1-108-72546-5 / 1108725465 |
ISBN-13 | 978-1-108-72546-0 / 9781108725460 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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