The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion
Gary Taylor editor Gabriel Egan editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:9th Feb '17
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This companion volume to The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works concentrates on the issues of canon and chronology--currently the most active and controversial debates in the field of Shakespeare editing. It presents in full the evidence behind the choices made in The Complete Works about which works Shakespeare wrote, in whole or part. A major new contribution to attribution studies, the Authorship Companion illuminates the work and methodology underpinning the groundbreaking New Oxford Shakespeare, and casts new light on the professional working practices, and creative endeavours, of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. We now know that Shakespeare collaborated with his literary and dramatic contemporaries, and that others adapted his works before they reached printed publication. The Authorship Companion's essays explore and explain these processes, laying out everything we currently know about the works' authorship. Using a variety of different attribution methods, The New Oxford Shakespeare has confirmed the presence of other writers' hands in plays that until recently were thought to be Shakespeare's solo work. Taking this process further with meticulous, fresh scholarship, essays in the Authorship Companion show why we must now add new plays to the accepted Shakespeare canon and reattribute certain parts of familiar Shakespeare plays to other writers. The technical arguments for these decisions about Shakespeare's creativity are carefully laid out in language that anyone interested in the topic can understand. The latest methods for authorship attribution are explained in simple but accurate terms and all the linguistic data on which the conclusions are based is provided. The New Oxford Shakespeare consists of four interconnected publications: the Modern Critical Edition (with modern spelling), the Critical Reference Edition (with original spelling), a companion volume on Authorship, and an online version integrating all of this material on OUP's high-powered scholarly editions platform. Together, they provide the perfect resource for the future of Shakespeare studies.
The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion is a text that challenges the ways in which we attempt to define what we mean by Shakespeare and his work, and we should expect nothing less from Taylor and the Oxford Shakespeare. In the present, the text stands as partly an experimental attempt to affirm an approach to authorship and partly a traditional updated reference text. Its greatest measure will of course be its use in the future and the influence it has on the next phase of Shakespeare editing and authorship studies. * Jennifer Young, The English Association *
This is a great book that every Renaissance scholar and student at all levels needs to read to understand the hidden chaos behind the seeming certainty in the attributions to an author that has been perceived as a unified and unshakable entity in British literature. * Anna Faktorovich, Pensylvania Literary Journal *
It serves not only as a guide to its readers but as the essential accompaniment to the other volumes of the New Oxford Shakespeare * Heather Hirschfeld, Bulletin of the Comediantes *
The Authorship Companion is a specialists banquet, a garden of discussion, argument, analysis, interpretation, speculation, information, and theoretical reflection, equal parts majestic survey of the state of authorship and deep dives into technical questions. * Henry S. Turner, SEL *
ISBN: 9780199591169
Dimensions: 249mm x 181mm x 45mm
Weight: 1608g
776 pages