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Title: Shakespeare's Language by Frank Kermode ISBN: 0-374-22636-9 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: May, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.43 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A book needed especially now
Comment: Kermode's book demonstrates an approach deeply unfashionable among many of today's academics, though it is part of a backlash against work which made a strong impact in the eighties and early nineties. As a result readers are likely to diverge widely in their reactions to it. Kermode provides an antidote to work on Shakespeare which shows little interest in the actual meaning of his text, leave alone in the artistry of his language. Yet, of all Shakespeare's outstanding qualities, it is surely especially his use of language - employed in a strikingly arresting, rich, subtle, suggestive yet revealing way - which sets him apart from other authors.
"Shakespeare's Language", as a title, may lead some to expect discussions of his syntax, semantics, prosody, etc., and there is certainly an urgent need for more work on such matters. But Kermode is - properly, I feel - concerned to explain what is ARTISTIC in Shakespeare's language: what, notably, makes it individualistic, well-crafted and imaginative rather than just representatively Elizabethan. Kermode's approach is the more essential at a time when there is a marked, and completely inaccurate, tendency to treat Shakespeare as though he was not, after all, anything special - but rather "just a product of his times". This kind of "egalitarianism" will not ultimately succeed in dwarfing this extraordinary author.
This, then, is one of several recent books (written by e.g. Brian Vickers, Graham Bradshaw, Harold Bloom) which share an urgent concern with Shakespeare's individual quality and see the need to protect that against those who for the most part treat him as having produced nothing other than "documents" (as when critics refer to "the Shakespearean text" in references to his plays). By contrast, Kermode to an extent succeeds in giving one an idea of how one's mind gets enriched and expanded by contact with what he rightly sees as the ditinctive creativity of Shakespeare's language. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University (see "More about me")
Rating: 1
Summary: Watery Consomme
Comment: The acclaim that has greeted this perfectly ordinary book is puzzling, as there is nothing terribly fresh or insightful in it. Empson, Mahood, Vickers, Joseph and even Hussey are all more rewarding.
Rating: 3
Summary: Largely derivative of Empson.
Comment: This book promises more than it delivers, with many scholarly discussions concerning texts actually pulling the discussion away from Shakespeare's language. It is a sort of homage to William Empson, a predecessor of Kermode at Cambridge, and a worthwhile reminder of the importance of Empson's 'Seven Types of Ambiguity' and 'The Structure of Complex Words'. Go to the root and read these!
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Title: Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom ISBN: 157322751X Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Companion by David Crystal, Ben Crystal, Stanley Wells ISBN: 0140291172 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Lectures on Shakespeare by W. H. Auden, Arthur C. Kirsch ISBN: 0691102821 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 09 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Pieces of My Mind : Essays and Criticism 1958-2002 by Frank Kermode ISBN: 0809076012 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 15 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear & Macbeth (New Shakespeare Library) by A. C. Bradley ISBN: 0140530193 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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