An Introduction to Shakespeare's Poems
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: January 18, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780333725924
Subjects: Poetry & poets: 16th to 18th centuries; Shakespeare studies & criticism; Works by individual poets: 16th to 18th centuries; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; English; Eastern Europe; Europe; Eastern European; Poetry; Shakespeare; In literature; Literary Criticism & Collections / European; Literary Criticism / Shakespeare; Literary Criticism-Eastern European; Literary Criticism-Poetry; Lucretia; European - General; 1564-1616; Adonis (Greek deity) in literature; History and criticism; Narrative poetry, English; Poetic works; Rape of Lucrece; Shakespeare, William,; Sonnets, English; Venus and Adonis
Description: "While it is widely acknowledged that Shakespeare is the most important poet to have written in English, most people think of his poetry as the verse that is written in his plays. Apart from a few of the Sonnets, Shakespeare's non-dramatic poems are hardly familiar at all -- yet it is possible that he considered them of greater literary merit than his dramatic works. An Introduction to Shakespeare's Poems provides a lively, informative and up-to-date guide to Shakespeare's non-dramatic poetry, including the two narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, the Sonnets, and various minor poems, some of which have only recently, and controversially, been attributed to the Bard. Peter Hyland locates Shakespeare as a sceptical voice within the turbulent and often hostile Elizabethan market-place in which professional poets had to work, rather than depicting him as a transmitter of elitist principles. Hyland relates the poems to the aesthetic tastes, social values and political concerns of the time, and explores what Shakespeare's poetry has to offer to the twenty-first century reader. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.