New Perspectives on the Shakespearean World
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Marienstras, Richard / Marienstras, PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press, Le Proche et Le Lointain (literally The Near and the Far) was first published in France in , and this translation now makes available to English-speaking readers one of the most significant European contributions to Elizabethan cultural history to appear in recent years. In the conjunction - or conflict - of the 'near' and the 'far' Professor Marienstras discerns an underlying dichotomy of major importance to an understanding of the Shakespearean world. Otbello, The Tempest and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore are amongst the works discussed in detail in this highly imaginative series of inter-disciplinary studies, and the author sees in the juxtaposition of nature and culture, sacrifice and sacrilege, purity and impurity, nourishment and poison a structural opposition that renders unified and comprehensible thematic material at first sight random and meaningless.