The Sonnets: The State of Play

Description

Shakespeare’s Sonnets both generate and demonstrate many of today’s most pressing debates about Shakespeare and poetry. They explore history and aesthetics, gender and society, time and memory, and continue to invite divergent responses from critics and poets. This freeze-frame volume showcases the range of current debate and ideas surrounding these still startling poems. Each chapter has been carefully selected for its originality and relevance to the needs of students, teachers, and researchers. Key themes and topics covered include: All the essays offer new perspectives and combine to give readers an up-to-date understanding of what is exciting and challenging about Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The approach, based on an individual poetic form, reflects how the sonnets are most commonly studied and taught. Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Dedication CONTENTS SERIES PREFACE NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Introduction Hannah Crawforth, Elizabeth Scott-Baumann and Clare Whitehead Notes PART ONE The Sonnets and History 1 Promising Eternity in the 1609 Quarto Cathy Shrank Notes 2 Thomas Thorpe’s Shakespeare:‘ The Only Begetter’ Lynne Magnusson Thorpe’s poetics of praise and the Book of Common Prayer Thorpe as first reader and the compliment of imitation Epistles dedicatory and commendatory: Thorpe and the literary scene The rhetorical genre of the greeting and the speech action of Thorpe’s paratext Notes 3 ‘Our brains beguiled’: Ecclesiastes and Sonnet 59’s Poetics of Temporal Instability Kristine Johanson A poetic context: Ecclesiastes and Henry Lok Writing temporal instability Notes 4 Unfulfilled Imperatives in Shakespeare’s Sonnets John Roe Notes PART TWO The Sonnets in Context 5 Shakespeare’s Sonnets as Event Colin Burrow Notes 6 A Lingering Farewell: Sonnet 87 Ann Thompson The legal and financial metaphors The rhyme scheme A king Farewell Notes 7 Enduring ‘Injurious Time’: Alternatives to Immortality and Proleptic Loss in Shakespeare’s Sonnets J.K. Barret I II III Notes 8 ‘Thou single wilt prove none’: Counting, Succession and Identity in Shakespeare’s Sonnets Shankar Raman Notes PART THREE Afterlives of the Sonnets 9 Desire is Pattern Matthew Harrison Mapping and meaning Reading surfaces: from sonnets to screens Lyrics in sequence: intensity and extensivity Revising poetics Textual surfaces Notes 10 Regifting Some Shakespeare Sonnets of Late Jonathan F.S. Post Notes 11 The Scar on the Face: Ted Hughes Reads Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reiko Oya Managing the unmanageable event Exploring a ‘knot of obsessions’ Remaining silent Staying true Stelling thy beauty’s form Notes 12 Shakespeare’s Sonnets in the Undergraduate Classroom Daniel Moss Teaching the sonnets in an introductory poetry course Teaching the sonnets alongside the plays Notes Afterword Heather Dubrow Notes INDEX