Shakespeare and Carnival: After Bakhtin (Early Modern Literature in History)

This collection of essays is the first to reassess a range of Shakespeare's plays in relation to carnivalesque theory. The plays discussed include: 2 Henry VI; Romeo and Juliet; A Midsummer Night's Dream; 1 & 2 Henry IV; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Hamlet; Measure for Measure; The Winter's Tale; Henry VIII . Contributors re-historicize the carnivalesque in different ways, offering both a developed application, or critique of, Bakhtin's thought. This volume makes an original contribution to the study of change and continuity in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. A short report and not otherwise / Stephen Longstaffe Carnival and death in Romeo and Juliet / Ronald Knowles The carnivalesque in A midsummer night's dream / David Wiles Shakespeare's battle of carnival and Lent / Franc̜ois Laroque Facing Puritanism / Kristen Poole The evacuation of Falstaff (The merry wives of Windsor) / Jonathan Hall Towards a theory of play and the carnivalesque in Hamlet / Phyllis Gorfain Shakespeare's carnival and the sacred, The winter's tale and Measure for measure / Anthony Gash Swimming on bladders : the dialogics of reformation in Shakespeare & Fletcher's Henry VIII / Gordon McMullan. This collection of essays reassesses a range of Shakespeare's plays in relation to carnivalesque theory. The plays discussed include: "Henry IV"; "Romeo and Juliet"; "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; "The Merry Wives of Windsor"; "Hamlet"; "Measure For Measure"; "The Winter's Tale"; and "Henry VIII". Contributors re-historicize the carnivalesque in different ways, offering both a developed application, or critique of, Bakhtin's thought.