Exploring Shakespeare: The Dynamics of Playmaking
S Viswanathan
Price
1225
ISBN
9788125026631
Language
English
Pages
300
Format
Paperback
Dimensions
140 x 216 mm
Year of Publishing
2005
Territorial Rights
World
Imprint
Orient BlackSwan

The book is a compilation of different erudite articles already published by the author in various scholarly journals and other edited volumes. The essays are a study and an enquiry into a variety of dramaturgical methods and processes that contribute to the theatrical dynamics of the Shakespeare plays. All the articles are concerned with the art of playmaking, with an examination of the tools and devices used by Shakespeare which contribute to the dramatic life of the play but also articulate the moral and sociocultural ideas of the time. There has not been much critical work in this area before and the book is one of the first of its kind. The book unravels the function and effect of many poetic, rhetorical, topological, visual and theatrical devices which Shakespeare exploits in his plays for a dramatic effect. Together, the essays present an idea of the multidimensional totality of theatre language and communication which Shakespeare achieves through a masterful orchestration of dramatic resources. The book will be of immense value to students, scholars and researchers in the fields of theatre techniques and art, literature in general and drama in particular.

S Viswanathan is the General Editor of the Orient Blackswan Drama Classics. Dr Viswanathan retired as Professor of English, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. Earlier, he taught at Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. He has held fellowships at the University of Kent, Canterbury, U.K. (1974–75) and the Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland (1984–85), and was also UGC National Lecturer in English (1986–87). Apart from about a hundred articles on Shakespeare and on a range of other literary topics in professional journals and collections in India and abroad, he has published The Shakespeare Play as Poem: A Critical Tradition in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) and On Shakespeare’s Dramaturgy (New Delhi: Spantech Publishers, 1993); he has co-edited Shakespeare in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987) and Critical Essays in Honour of V S Seturaman (Madras: Macmillan, 1987).