Description

The second volume of this Short History of English Literature picks up where the first volume left off. Starting from the first professional dramas performed for Elizabethan audiences, it then introduces the University Wits and other contemporaries of William Shakespeare's, before focusing more specifically on the dramatic works of Christopher Marlowe and the Bard. Like the first volume, the present monograph makes no claims to original research, nor is it intended to be comprehensive or definitive. Rather it is meant to be used as a guidebook to historical facts and a sampler of critical interpretations selected from an abundant scholarship providing the student with the pedagogical expertise of distinguished Renaissance scholars. The critical selection ranges from classical Shakespearean scholarship to more recent titles that might suggest innovative, up-to-date ways of rereading Shakespeare. To this end, the last part of the volume introduces several more theoretical approaches to five plays, using especially psychoanalysis and deconstruction.