Object

Title: Charles Williams as a Shakespearean critic in the age of modernism

Creator:

Cotterill, Rowland

Date:

2019

Resource Type:

rozdział w książce

Contributor:

Gołębiowska, Urszula - red. nauk. ; Kubasiewicz, Mirosława - red. nauk.

Group publication title:

Scripta Humana, 14

Abstract:

Charles Williams, known as novelist, poet, and member of the inter-war "Inklings" circle of writers, also contributed to Modernist critical debate, particularly in his writings on Shakespeare. He responded distinctively to contemporary critical emphases on "Elizabethan theatrical convention" and aesthetic and poetic autonomy. ; He re-asserted, against contemporary tendencies, the salience in Shakespearean drama of individual choice and sequential action. Stressing the power of Shakespearean poetry to register ambiguity and to embody divided consciousness, like William Empson, he also sought to balance claims about "character" with an emphasis on the poetic modes and energies whereby character and self-division come into existence. ; Williams found in Shakespeare`s oeuvre a development towards a sense, first fully present in "Troilus and Cressida", of "division in the nature of things". Such division, debated but philosophically unresolved in several plays, is expressed with unique force in tragic poetry which embodies the complex co-presence of disorientation, solitude, and a will to remedial but destructive action. ; Williams`s discussions here powerfully rework Aristotelean stipulations about the nature of tragedy in general. He saw a Shakespearean resolution of, or escape from, tragedy in the late Romances, and in the prelude to them, "Antony and Cleopatra", where "division" was reworked in terms of a poetic acceptance and enjoyment of the simultaneous multiplicity, and the possibilities for forgiveness, within human relationships.

Publisher:

Zielona Góra: Oficyna Wydawnicza Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego

Format:

application/pdf

Resource Identifier:

oai:zbc.uz.zgora.pl:78256

Pages:

91-106

Source:

Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego: Seria Scripta Humana, tom 14

Language:

eng

Rights:

Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego

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