For my paper I think I'll probably be focusing in on the country vs town life aspect in Shakespeare's plays, and in less specific terms, on the role of setting in characterization, plot development, etc. So far I have found "As You Like It", and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to be the most relevant to my topic.
As for sources, so far these are the ones I've found:
1. Gilroy, Amanda. Green and Pleasant Land: English Culture and the Romantic Countryside. Leuven: Peeters, 2004. Print.
I found this source by searching "rural" as a keyword in the slightly more general search of "pastoral in literature". By using these two together I found this book about the culture of the pastoral setting in England. I think that reading this will help me understand both the actual culture in the countryside in England, and also just the more romanticized version of that reality.
2. Wagner, J. A. Voices of Shakespeare's England Contemporary Accounts of Elizabethan Daily Life. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood, 2010. Print.
This is an online reference source that I found through the BYU Shakespeare database. It's basically an online collection of various articles, sources, etc. of life during that time. I think this will be useful in contrasting my above source because these are all different, and more accounts of actual life, which includes city life. It doesn't have much to do with literature, but it pinpoints this time period which will be useful in deciding how the city/country juxtaposition works within Shakespeare's time period.
3. Dobson, Michael. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. I found this just by searching for Shakespeare in the HBLL search engine. It basically has features on every play, including context, etc. I can use this for both the plays I'm looking at and because it doesn't have criticism, it'll be perfect for just learning more about the general text.
4. Shakespeare, William, and Leah S. Marcus. As You like It: Authoritative Text, Sources and Contexts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
The Norton Critical Edition of As You Like It is the book that Professor Burton provided for Jordan and I for our research. I think that the source and reference section in the book will be helpful because it will provide some context for this specific play. A play I know very little about. It does also have more critical sources, which I can use in my later research. One of the more general articles though has information on animal/human differences, which piques my interest.
5. Boyce, Charles, and David Allen White. Shakespeare A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Plays, His Poems, His Life and Times, and More. New York: Facts on File, 1990. Print.
The Shakespeare A to Z. I think that someone in class had this book. I found the title on the Brazen Serpents blog post, and I thought it might be a helpful way to get an at-a-glance idea of which other plays will be most helpful to my research. It is checked out at our library but I'm going to get the one from the Provo library.
That sounds like a good list. If you are looking for another general reference, Rosemary's The Norton Shakespeare probably has some interesting articles on "As You Like It" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Also, I don't know if this will help or not, but my research taught me some interesting musical aspects of Midsummer. The mechanical's play at the end is marked by the use of trumpets. They were suppose to be used for royalty and other great events and was very inappropriate in its use for their play, furthering the awkwardness of the last scene.
ReplyDeleteActually, that article on music might help. It's a good observation of how the customs of the time were very important. Thanks!
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