Overview

Modernist writers, critics, and artists sparked a fresh and distinctive interpretation of Shakespeare's plays which has proved remarkably tenacious, as Richard Halpern explains in this lively and provocative book. The preoccupations of such high modernists as T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and James Joyce set the tone for the critical reception of Shakespeare in the twentieth century. Halpern contends their habits of thought continue to dominate postmodern schools of criticism that claim to have broken with the modernist legacy.Halpern addresses such topics as imperialism and modernism's cult of the primitive, the rise of mass culture, modernist anti-semitism, and the aesthetic of the machine. His discussion considers figures as diverse as Orson Welles and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Shakespeare critics including Northrop Frye, Cleanth Brooks, Stephen Greenblatt, and Stanley Cavell.Shakespeare's works have been subjected to a continuing process of historical reinterpretation in which every new era has imposed its own cultural and ideological presuppositions on the plays. The most enduring contribution of modernism, Halpern suggests, has been the juxtaposition of an awareness of historical distance and a mapping of Shakespeare's plays onto the present. Using modernist themes and approaches, he constructs new readings of four Shakespeare plays.

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Reviews

Shakespeare among the Moderns is an erudite, elegantly written and thoroughly enlightening inquiry into the place of Shakespeare in the development of modernist theory and practice. Richard Halpern's study moves easily between the Renaissance and modernity, demonstrating with equal persuasiveness the extent to which modernism has shaped our understanding of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare the practice of modernism. This book should be of very wide interest, as it offers much more than a contribution to the history of Shakespeare's reception. Surprising at every turn with the scope of its reference, Shakespeare among the Moderns is nothing less than a powerful historiographical essay on the meaning of modernity. John Guillory, The Johns Hopkins University

Shakespeare Among the Moderns is a complex and impressive piece of work. . . This is a rich and original piece of work. It will be of interest not just to Shakespearean and Renaissance scholars, but to everyone concerned with the field of cultural history. -Andrew Murphy, Yearbook of English Studies. 2000.

Author Information

Richard Halpern is Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of many books, including Shakespeare's Perfume: Sodomy and Sublimity in the Sonnets, Wilde, Freud and Lacan.

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