Shakespeare's Serial Universe

Patterns, Obsessions, Repetitions
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-21621-6
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 334 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

This innovative book transforms how we understand Shakespeare's creative universe and enduring relevance. Rather than looking at the plays in isolation, Elisabeth Bronfen treats seriality as the organizing principle in Shakespeare’s works, revealing how Shakespeare’s dramatic universe operates through recurring formulas travelling between plays.

Each chapter tracks a thematic series, nocturnal scenes, hallucinations and spectral apparitions; the trafficking in secrets and the culture of surveillance it produces; to the folly of love and the reversal of desire into contempt; the cyclical interplay between war and peace; the anxieties and fantasies that queenship raises; cross-dressing; the corpse as a body of evidence; objects – bloody cloths, jewels, letters and chopped of heads – that serve as actors in their own right; and final words.

This will be illuminating reading for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies, as well as a wider audience interested in more philosophically oriented discussions of Shakespeare and those interested in issues of seriality. With the concept of “serial reading” as a novel form of literary interpretation, it will also be of interest to those in the wider field of literary and cultural theory.

Zielgruppe

Academic, General, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bronfen, Elisabeth

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Dramen und Dramatiker
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements; Prologue. Serial reading as a hermeneutic process; 1. Dreamscapes and spectral visions; 2. The theatrical charm of cryptomania; 3. A dead beloved returns; 4. War as serial drama; 5. Female sovereignty: A typology; 6. The signifying body as evidence; 7. Follow the objects; 8. The end as a new beginning; Appendix: Notes on References; Index

Über Autor(innen)

Elisabeth Bronfen is Emerita Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University, USA. Her areas of specialization are Literature and visual culture, femininity and death, cross mapping as a hermeneutic process, and psychoanalysis.