This text mounts a challenge to orthodox and oppositional critics who continue to regard Shakespearian drama as conservative in intent or effect.

Shakespeare

Literature & Fiction

Ryan, Kiernan

Classics

PRENTICE/HALL

Looks at the diversity of the latest feminist, post-structuralist and new historicist accounts of King Lear. The contributors include Stephen Greenblatt, Terry Eagleton, Annabel Patterson and Jonathan Goldberg.

King Lear (New Casebooks, 83)

Dramas & Plays

Red Globe Press

Shakespeare's Comedies

In this groundbreaking book one of the most original and compelling voices in contemporary Shakespeare criticism undertakes a detailed study of the ten extraordinary comedies Shakespeare wrote during his first decade as a dramatist: The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Through close readings of these plays Kiernan Ryan reveals Shakespeare's deepening disenchantment with his world and his dream of that world transfigured. Ryan engages with each comedy as a unique work of dramatic and poetic art, with its own distinctive concerns and critical challenges, paying special attention to its language and form. As the haunting vision shared by the plays emerges from Ryan's acute analysis of each of them, the book transforms our understanding and appreciation of Shakespearean comedy. Written in a lively, accessible style, Shakespeare's Comedies is essential reading not only for students and teachers, but also for anyone keen to consider these plays from a fresh perspective.

In this groundbreaking book one of the most original and compelling voices in contemporary Shakespeare criticism undertakes a detailed study of the ten extraordinary comedies Shakespeare wrote during his first decade as a dramatist: The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Through close readings of these plays Kiernan Ryan reveals Shakespeare’s deepening disenchantment with his world and his dream of that world transfigured. Ryan engages with each comedy as a unique work of dramatic and poetic art, with its own distinctive concerns and critical challenges, paying special attention to its language and form. As the haunting vision shared by the plays emerges from Ryan’s acute analysis of each of them, the book transforms our understanding and appreciation of Shakespearean comedy. Written in a lively, accessible style, Shakespeare’s Comedies is essential reading not only for students and teachers, but also for anyone keen to consider these plays from a fresh perspective.

Palgrave

First published to critical acclaim in 1989, this book is now recognised as one of the most original and influential critical studies of Shakespeare to have appeared in recent times.For this brand-new edition, Kiernan Ryan has not only revised and updated the text throughout, but he has also added a great deal of new material, expanding the book  to twice the size of the first edition. The section on Shakespearean comedy now includes an essay on Shakespeare's first scintillating experiment in the genre, The Comedy of Errors, and a study of his most perplexing problem play, Measure for Measure. A provocative new last chapter,' "Dreaming on things to come": Shakespeare and the Future of Criticism', reveals how much modern criticism can learn from the appropriation of Shakespeare by Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce.Students, teachers, and anyone with a passionate interest in what the plays have to say to us today, will find this modern classic of Shakespeare criticism indispensable.

Shakespeare: Third Edition

History & Criticism

First published to critical acclaim in 1989, this book is now recognised as one of the most original and influential critical studies of Shakespeare to have appeared in recent times.For this brand-new edition, Kiernan Ryan has not only revised and updated the text throughout, but he has also added a great deal of new material, expanding the book to twice the size of the first edition. The section on Shakespearean comedy now includes an essay on Shakespeare's first scintillating experiment in the genre, The Comedy of Errors, and a study of his most perplexing problem play, Measure for Measure. A provocative new last chapter,' "Dreaming on things to come": Shakespeare and the Future of Criticism', reveals how much modern criticism can learn from the appropriation of Shakespeare by Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce.Students, teachers, and anyone with a passionate interest in what the plays have to say to us today, will find this modern classic of Shakespeare criticism indispensable.

New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have become two of the most powerful and appealing movements in modern criticism. Their conquest of Renaissance studies has escalated into global colonization of English and American literary history. A wealth of innovative work has emerged on everything from the "Canterbury Tales" to the "Cantos," bringing intense theoretical controversy in its wake. This Reader pulls the diversity and polemical vigor of this new critical constellation into focus for the first time.

New Historicism & Cultural Materialism

British & Irish

Bloomsbury Academic

Shakespeare (Harvester New Readings)

Literary

Humanities Pr

Shakespeare (Harverster New Readings)

Prometheus+books

Shakespeare: The Last Plays (Longman Critical Readers)

This is the first collection of criticism on Shakespeare's romances to register the impact of modern literary theory on interpretations of these plays. Kiernan Ryan brings together the most important recent essays on Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, the greatest of the `last plays', staging a dynamic debate between feminist, poststructuralist, psychoanalytic and new historicist views of the masterpieces Shakespeare wrote at the close of his career. The book aims not only to anthologise accounts of the last plays by leading Shakespearean critics, including Stephen Greenblatt, Janet Adelman, Leah Marcus, Howard Felperin and Steven Mullaney, but also to dramatise what is at stake in the choice of a particular critical approach. It allows the student to compare the strengths and limitations of a deconstructive and a feminist reading of the same romance, or to test the plausibility of one psychoanalytic angle on the last plays against another. The headnotes that preface the essays highlight their distinctive slants on Shakespearean romance, unpack the theoretical assumptions that steer their interpretations, and throw into relief the key points at which their authors collide or converge. The editor's introduction places the essays in the context of twentieth-century criticism of the last plays and makes a powerful case for a fundamental reappraisal of Shakespearean romance. The comprehensive, fully annotated bibliography provides an unrivalled guide to further reading on all four plays.

Shakespeare (Longman Critical Readers)

Routledge

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Books by Ryan, Kiernan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ryan, Kiernan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Shakespeare

King Lear (New Casebooks, 83)

Shakespeare's Comedies

Shakespeare's Comedies

Shakespeare: Third Edition

Shakespeare: Third Edition

New Historicism & Cultural Materialism

Shakespeare (Harvester New Readings)

Shakespeare (Harverster New Readings)

Shakespeare (Longman Critical Readers)