The Love Story in Shakespearean Comedy

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University Press of Kentucky, 2014/10/17 - 248 ページ

In this fascinating study, Anthony J. Lewis argues that it is the hero himself, rejecting a woman he apprehends as a threat, who is love's own worst enemy. Drawing upon classical and Renaissance drama, iconography, and a wide range of traditional and feminist criticism, Lewis demonstrates that in Shakespeare the actions and reactions of hero and heroine are contingent upon social setting—father-son relations, patriarchal restrictions on women, and cultural assumptions about gender-appropriate behavior. This compelling analysis shows how Shakespeare deepened the familiar love stores he inherited from New Comedy and Greek romance.

Beginning with a penetrating analysis of the hero's contradictory response to sexual attraction, Lewis's discussion traces the heroine's reaction to abandonment and slander, and the lover's subsequent parallel descents into versions of bastardy and death. In arguing that comedy's happy ending is the product of the gender role reversals brought on by their evolving relationship itself, Lewis shows in meticulous detail how sexual stereotypes influence attitudes and restrict behavior.

This perceptive discussion of male response to family and of female response to rejection will appeal to Shakespeare scholars and students, as well as to the theater community. Lewis's persuasive argument, that Shakespeare's heroes and heroines are, from the first, three-dimensional figures far removed from the stock types of Plautus, Terence, and his continental sources, will prove a valuable contribution to the ongoing feminist reappraisal of Shakespeare.

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目次

Introduction
1
1 The Spirit of My Father
11
2 We Cannot Fight for Love
31
3 Any Bar Any Cross Any Impediment
48
4 We Are All Bastards
73
5 Patience on a Monument
104
6 Th Idea of Her Life
124
7 The Marriage of True Minds
170
Conclusion
209
Notes
213
Index
231
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著者について (2014)

Anthony J. Lewis is professor of English at the State University of New York, College at Buffalo.

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