Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford Shakespeare Topics) - Tapa dura

Taylor's book presents a lucid, lively, witty introduction to the field ... Taylor strikes a fine balance between summarizing critical opinions, and opening them up for further interrogation, and the detailed referencing, notes, and bibliography leave the reader ready to plunge into deeper waves. No better single volume exists to enable this leap ... Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century will be welcomed by students of all levels of experience. It is a neat, compact, thoroughly useful text: eminently portable, and consultable. (Modern Language Review)

Admirable book ... Taylor is an authoritative, witty, and lively guide ... will be invaluable to students and teachers ... an excellent book, balanced and entertaining, and saturated with Shakespearean quotation - as if to remind us of the course and inspiration for so much throwing about of critical brains. (New Theatre Quarterly)

Michael Taylor's ... clarity of exposition is a triumph. Along the way he maps the hinterlands of a long century's criticism, helping to explain what has counted as convincing, and why. (Ruth Morse, Times Literary Supplement)

Oxford University Press offer a mix of engagingly written introductions to a variety of Topics intended largely for undergraduates. Each author has clearly been reading and listening to the most recent scholarship, but they wear their learning lightly. (Ruth Morse, Times Literary Supplement)

Taylor ... proves a most congenial guide on this conducted tour of 20th-century criticism ... Taylor's asides and judgements are wryly perceptive ... an admirable introduction to a dauntingly vast topic. (Around the Globe)

Oxford Shakespeare Topics (General Editors Peter Holland and Stanley Wells) provide students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship, including some general anthologies relating to Shakespeare. Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century traces the reception of Shakespeare in the critical literature from the end of Victorianism to the present day. It charts a course through the turbulent waters of the twentieth century's intense and prolific engagement with Shakespeare, dramatist and poet. This is not an exhaustive history: its aim is to describe the place of the major Shakespeare critics in the schools and movements of their times. Following an introductory overview of the major trends in Shakespeare criticism in their embattled state in the twentieth century, later chapters take up the various strands of this criticism in a more expansive manner. While recognizing that these strands work from genuine differences of principle and methodology, Taylor points out connections, parallels, and echoes between and among the critical approaches. The book ranges widely across the plays and poems, and canvasses all stages of Shakespeare's career.