LibGuides: ENG 2700: Critical Writing &amp; Literary Analysis: Books about William Shakespeare's Hamlet

Literary Criticism

Books
eBooks

Hamlet and the Concept of Character
ISBN: 0801843391

Likening his approach to that of a field anthropologist conducting a long-term study of a single society, States explores the nature of dramatic character by examining the inhabitants of one of the world's best-known plays."
Hamlet's Enemy
ISBN: 0823680673

"Hamlet's Enemy" is perhaps the most comprehensive and authoritative study of the theme of madness in "Hamlet" yet written. It fully and sensitively explicates the many fundamental issues of existence with which the play deals: how primal sin corrupts; how corruption disillusions; how disillusion breeds preoccupation with death and destroys Eros; and how avengers lose their souls in the inexorable conflict and turmoil that afflict them.
Interpreting Hamlet: Materials for Analysis
ISBN: 9780810201507
The Passions of Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes
ISBN: 0813912776

In opposition to the critical positions of new historicists and cultural materialists, this book reaffirms that Shakespeare's plays represent enduring truths of our emotional and spiritual life and that these truths help account for Shakespeare's continuing popularity.

All for Nothing
ISBN: 9780262526340

In All for Nothing, Andrew Cutrofello critically examines the performance history of this unique role. Philosophers have taken Hamlet to embody specific forms of negativity that first came into view in modernity. Cutrofello analyzes five aspects of Hamlet's negativity: his melancholy, negative faith, nihilism, tarrying (which Cutrofello distinguishes from "delaying"), and nonexistence.
Hamlet's Dreams
ISBN: 9781441129284

Hamlet's Dreams brings together the Robben Island Prison of Nelson Mandela and the prison that is Denmark for Shakespeare's Hamlet. David Shalkwyk uses the circulation of the so-called 'Robben Island Shakespeare', a copy of the Alexander edition of the Complete Works that was secretly circulated, annotated and signed by a group of Robben Island political prisoner in the 1970s (including Nelson Mandela), to examine the representation and experience of imprisonment in South African prison memoirs and Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Shakespeare for Students
ISBN: 1414429371

Collection of essays by Shakespeare scholars that have been selected for students at the high school or undergraduate college level. Each entry includes an introduction; a plot synopsis; a character list; a discussion of the work's principal themes; information about the style and literary devices used; a conversation about the work's historical context; and a critical overview.
To Be or Not to Be
ISBN: 9780826489975

Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy is quoted more often than any other passage in Shakespeare. It is arguably the most famous speech in the Western world - though few of us can remember much about it. This book carefully unpacks the individual words, phrases and sentences of Hamlet's soliloquy in order to reveal how and why it has achieved its remarkable hold on our culture.
William Shakespeare: Hamlet
ISBN: 9781847600844

This book aims to give students the basis for an informed discussion of Shakespeare's play and to explore it as a play profoundly concerned with the business of playing and the tragedy of Hamlet as a actor.

A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Sexual Puns and Their Significance
ISBN: 0312126778

This dictionary examines previously unnoted puns on the erotic attitudes and practices of the heterosexual and homosexual, the sexual deviant, and the impotent. It includes scatological puns in their usually bawdy contexts and ethnic puns, as sexually snide then as now. It stresses the need to read and hear Shakespeare word by word, giving full weight to each one and asking why the line is so and not otherwise.
The Elizabethan World Picture
ISBN: 9780394701622

This brief and illuminating account of the ideas of world order prevalent in the Elizabethan age and later is an indispensable companion for readers of the great writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists, Donne and Milton, among many others.
Hamlet
ISBN: 0313300828

The purpose of this reference book is to introduce students and others first approaching Hamlet to the traditions of scholarship, criticism, and performance that it has inspired in four centuries. The volume gives close attention to the textual history of the play and to the historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts in which it emerged. Special attention is given to the religious, philosophical, and psychological aspects of the text.
Pronouncing Shakespeare's Words
ISBN: 0313306559

This volume is an authoritative resource that allows readers to quickly find the correct pronunciation of any difficult word in Shakespeare's works. In order to determine which pronunciations are actually in use today, 100 Shakespearean scholars and dramaturges from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom were asked for their recommendations on over 300 controversial words.
Understanding Hamlet
ISBN: 0313298777

Shakespeare's Hamlet, regarded by many as the world's most famous play by the world's most famous writer, is one of the most complex, demanding, discussed, and influential literary texts in English. As a means of access to this play, this unique collection of primary materials and commentary will help student and teacher explore historical, literary, theatrical, social, and cultural issues related to the play.

English Renaissance Drama
ISBN: 9781847600714

Introduces the conclusions of recent scholarship and research into theatrical conditions, conventions and concepts in the time of Shakespeare.