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Author Acker, Faith D., author.

Title First readers of Shakespeare's sonnets, 1590-1790 / Faith D. Acker
Published New York, NY : Routledge, 2021
©2021

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Description 1 online resource (xxiii, 246 pages) : illustrations
Series Routledge studies in Shakespeare
Routledge studies in Shakespeare.
Contents The passionate pilgrim and Shakespeare's 'sugred' reputation -- Reading and revising Shake-Speare's sonnets (1609) -- The manuscripts of Sonnet 2: sex, sonnets, and spirituality -- John Benson's sonnet sequences (poems: written by Wil. Shake-Speare. Gent.) -- Celebrations of church and king: an early Cambridge reader -- Restoration revisions: musical, dramatic, and miscellany readings -- Supplementing Shakespeare and creating the canon -- Edmond Malone: plotting the sonnets -- Reading the sonnets after Malone: independent responses
Summary For more than four centuries, cultural preferences, literary values, critical contexts, and personal tastes have governed readers' responses to Shakespeare's sonnets. Early private readers often considered these poems in light of the religious, political, and humanist values by which they lived. Other seventeenth- and eighteenth- century readers, such as stationers and editors, balanced their personal literary preferences against the imagined or actual interests of the literate public to whom they marketed carefully curated editions of the sonnets, often successfully. Whether public or private, however, many disparate sonnet interpretations from the sonnets' first two centuries in print have been overlooked by modern sonnet scholarship, with its emphasis on narrative and amorous readings of the 1609 sequence. First Readers of Shakespeare's Sonnets reintroduces many early readings of Shakespeare's sonnets, arguing that studying the priorities and interpretations of these previous readers expands the modern critical applications of these poems, thereby affording them numerous future applications. This volume draws upon book history, manuscript studies, and editorial theory to recover four lost critical approaches to the sonnets, highlighting early readers' interests in Shakespeare's classical adaptations, political applicability, religious themes, and rhetorical skill during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Restricted: Printing from this resource is governed by The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations (UK) and UK copyright law currently in force. WlAbNL
Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on November 02, 2020)
Subject Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Sonnets.
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Criticism and interpretation -- History.
SUBJECT Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 fast
Sonnets (Shakespeare, William) fast
Subject LITERARY CRITICISM -- General.
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781000190717
1000190714
9781003048954
1003048951
9781000190816
1000190811
9781000190762
1000190765