Overcoming the temptation to create his own Shakespeare, Auden penetrates to the very core of Shakespeare’s originality,...
Lectures on Shakespeare delivered by British poet and critic Auden in 1946 at the New School for Social Research in New York, carefully reconstructed by Kirsch from students’ notes.
While Auden provides a thorough scholarly interpretation of Shakespeare’s works in chronological order, he also takes every opportunity to discuss them in a much broader historical and cultural context. He shares his impressions of American society, draws parallels between Richard III and Hitler, and quotes profusely from a wide range of writers and philosophers (including Dante, Eliot, and Kierkegaard). The Merchant of Venice provokes his evaluation of Elizabethan anti-Semitism (which, according to Auden, was less racial than xenophobic). In connection with As You Like It, Auden speaks of pastoral conventions, drawing on Hesiod, Virgil, Rousseau, and contemporary literary theory. He does not hesitate to voice extremely critical opinions: He declares The Taming of the Shrew a complete failure, dismisses Twelfth Night as an “unpleasant play,” and declares The Merry Wives of Windsor to be “dull” (proposing that his students listen to Verdi’s Falstaff rather than read the play that inspired it). Auden also finds fault with Hamlet: He believes that Hamlet’s boredom compels him to act theatrically, and he suggests that the play was written out of spite against actors. However, as Auden repeatedly emphasizes, only minor poets are always technically perfect, because they always tread upon familiar ground. The true genius, who explores new forms of expression as a matter of course, inevitably risks failure. Shakespeare received his training with chronicle plays, and he drew important lessons from history concerning the interdependence of characters and situations. He withstood the test of artistic freedom, creating his plays against the ill-defined and amorphous conventions of Elizabethan drama. And, most important of all, his themes are so universal that his plays can appeal to general audiences even today.
Overcoming the temptation to create his own Shakespeare, Auden penetrates to the very core of Shakespeare’s originality, expressing himself in crystalline analytical prose.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-691-05730-3
Page Count: 389
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
