Shakespeare's Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeare Sources (Athlone Shakespeare Dictionary Series)

This encyclopaedia-style Dictionary is a comprehensive reference guide to Shakespeare's literary knowledge and recent scholarship on it. Nearly 200 entries cover the full range of literary writing Shakespeare was acquainted with, and which influenced his own work, including classical, historical, religious and contemporary works. It provides an overview of his use of authors such as Virgil, Chaucer, Erasmus, Marlowe and Samuel Daniel, whose influence is across the canon. Other entries cover anonymous or collective works such as the Bible, Emblems, Homilies, Chronicle History plays and the Morality tradition in drama. Entries cover writers and works whose importance to Shakespeare has emerged more clearly in recent years thanks to new research. Others describe and explain current thinking on long-recognized sources as Plutarch, Ovid, Holinshed, Ariosto and Montaigne. Entries for all major sources, over 80 in number, feature surveys of the writer's place in Shakespeare's time, detailed dicussion of the relationship to Shakespeare's plays and poems, and full bibliography. Sample passages from writers and texts of early modern England allow the volume to be used also as a reader in the literature commonly known in Shakespeare's era; these excerpts, together with reproductions of pages and illustrations from the original texts, convey something of the flavour of the material as Shakespeare would have encountered it. "This encyclopedia-style Dictionary is a comprehensive reference guide to Shakespeare's literary knowledge and recent scholarship on it. Nearly 200 entries cover the full range of literary writing Shakespeare was acquainted with, and which influenced his own work, including classical, historical, religious and contemporary works. It provides an overview of his use of authors such as Virgil, Chaucer, Erasmus, Marlowe and Samuel Daniel, whose influence is across the canon. Other entries cover anonymous or collective works such as the Bible, Emblems, Homilies, Chronicle History plays and the Morality tradition in drama. Entries cover writers and works whose importance to Shakespeare has emerged more clearly in recent years due to new research. Others describe and explain current thinking on long-recognized sources such as Plutarch, Ovid, Holinshed, Ariosto and Montaigne. Entries for all major sources, over 80 in number, feature surveys of the writer's place in Shakespeare's time, detailed discussion of the relationship to Shakespeare's plays and poems, and full bibliography. Sample passages from writers and texts of early modern England allow the volume to be used also as a reader in the literature commonly known in Shakespeare's era; these excerpts, together with reproductions of pages and illustrations from the original texts, convey the flavor of the material as Shakespeare would have encountered it."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Illustrations......Page 7 Contents......Page 6 Series Editor's Preface......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 9 Abbreviations......Page 10 Introduction......Page 12 A......Page 20 B......Page 43 C......Page 86 D......Page 133 E......Page 146 F......Page 178 G......Page 194 H......Page 236 I-J......Page 282 K......Page 284 L......Page 290 M......Page 324 N......Page 397 O......Page 403 P-Q......Page 417 R......Page 454 S......Page 457 T......Page 490 U-V......Page 508 W......Page 520 X-Y......Page 522 General Bibliography......Page 523 Index......Page 534 Annotation This is a comprehensive reference guide to Shakespeare's literary knowledge. An A-Z of nearly 200 entries covers the full range of writers and texts that influenced Shakespeare's work from classical to contemporary. Entries for all major sources feature surveys of their place in Shakespeare's time, sample excerpts, detailed discussion of their relationship to the plays and poems, and full bibliography Annotation A comprehensive reference guide to Shakespeare's literary knowledge, Shakespeare's Books is an A-Z of nearly 200 entries, covering the full range of writers and texts which influenced Shakespeare's work, from classical to contemporary