Words of Power
Reading Shakespeare and the Bible
Seiten
2016
Lutterworth Press (Verlag)
978-0-7188-9413-9 (ISBN)
Lutterworth Press (Verlag)
978-0-7188-9413-9 (ISBN)
A lively and thought-provoking study of two major icons of Anglophone culture - the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare - exploring how successive generations have dealt with common issues of canonicity, interpretation and appropriation.
Shakespeare and the Bible are titans of English-speaking culture: their images are endlessly cited and recycled, and their language permeates everything from our public ceremonies to our private jokes. In Words of Power, Jem Bloomfield explores the cultural reverberations of these two collections of books, and how each era finds new meanings as they encounter works such as Hamlet or the Gospel of Mark.
Beginning with a shrewd examination of how we have codified and standardised their canons, deciding which books and which words are included in the official collections and which are excluded, Bloomfield charts the ways in which every generation grapples with these enigmatic and complex texts. He explores the way they are read and performed in public, the institutions that use their names to legitimise their own activities, and how the texts are quoted by politicians, lords and rappers. Words of Power throws modern ideas about Shakespeare and the Bible into sharp relief by contrasting them with those of our ancestors, showing how our engagements with these texts reveal as much about ourselves as their actual meanings.
Shakespeare and the Bible are titans of English-speaking culture: their images are endlessly cited and recycled, and their language permeates everything from our public ceremonies to our private jokes. In Words of Power, Jem Bloomfield explores the cultural reverberations of these two collections of books, and how each era finds new meanings as they encounter works such as Hamlet or the Gospel of Mark.
Beginning with a shrewd examination of how we have codified and standardised their canons, deciding which books and which words are included in the official collections and which are excluded, Bloomfield charts the ways in which every generation grapples with these enigmatic and complex texts. He explores the way they are read and performed in public, the institutions that use their names to legitimise their own activities, and how the texts are quoted by politicians, lords and rappers. Words of Power throws modern ideas about Shakespeare and the Bible into sharp relief by contrasting them with those of our ancestors, showing how our engagements with these texts reveal as much about ourselves as their actual meanings.
Jem Bloomfield is an Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of Nottingham. A scholar of Renaissance literature, he studied at Oxford before earning his PhD from the University of Exeter. In his free time, he blogs about Shakespeare, Christianity, and feminism - and occasionally detective fiction - at quiteirregular.wordpress.com.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Text Itself (I): Questions about the Canon
2. The Text Itself (II): The Words on the Page
3. Ways of Reading
4. Performing the Word
5. People of the Books
6. Calling on Their Name: Quotation and Appropriation
(After)Words of Power
Bibliography and Further Reading
Index
Erscheint lt. Verlag | 26.5.2016 |
---|---|
Verlagsort | Cambridge |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 156 x 234 mm |
Gewicht | 271 g |
Themenwelt | Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik | |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte | |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
ISBN-10 | 0-7188-9413-8 / 0718894138 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-7188-9413-9 / 9780718894139 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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