Research Guides: Shakespeare Research Guide: Finding Books

Selected Books that Provide Context

Here are some of the print and e-Books you can find in the catalog using the simple search strategies found on this page. This is only a small selection so be sure to search the library catalog for additional books on your topic!

How to Read a Shakespeare Play by David M. Bevington
Call Number: PR658.H44 B33 2007
ISBN: 9781405113953
Publication Date: 2006-06-16
This clear and succinct book is designed for general readers who want to know how to go about reading Shakespeare?s works for pleasure. Encourages readers to approach Shakespeare's works aggressively, interactively, and questioningly Focuses on six popular Shakespeare plays - A Midsummer Night?s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV Part I, Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest Recommends the best editions, recordings and DVDs / videos of these plays Discusses the production of the plays on stage and screen Introduces readers to different genres in Shakespeare ? romantic comedy, English history, tragedy and romance Avoids jargon and abstract literary theory
Imagining Shakespeare by Stephen Orgel
Call Number: PR2989 .L438 2009
ISBN: 1403911770
Publication Date: 2003-08-06
In this beautifully illustrated book, one of the foremost Shakespeareans of our time explores the ways in which Shakespeare has been imagined from his time to ours. In a penetrating series of interpretations, Stephen Orgel explores the ironies and paradoxes that have characterized the reconstruction of Shakespeare's texts, his image, the staging and illustration of his plays over the past four centuries, as he is perennially reinvented for new cultural ends. Drawing on performance history, textual history, and the visual arts (including a fascinating chapter on portraiture),Imagining Shakespeare displays throughout the cultural versatility, elegance, lucidity, and wit which have become the hallmarks of Orgel's style.
Women in the Age of Shakespeare by Theresa D. Kemp
Call Number: PR2991 .K46 2010
ISBN: 9780313343049
Publication Date: 2009-11-01
Portia and Kate, Ophelia and Desdemona, Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth-the beautifully realized women in Shakespeare's plays continue to captivate us, relevant and revealing even today, centuries after their creation. They also offer a window into the realities of women's daily lives across the social spectrum during Shakespeare's own time.

How to Use Gil Find

This video produced by Georgia Perimeter College. It offers advice and tips on using the GIL Catalog to do searches in the field of literature

Catalog Search Tips

Search the catalog using keywords, titles, authors or subject terms.

Research Question: How does Shakespeare's portrayal of Rosalind in As You Like It compare with Renaissance attitudes toward women?

Search One: (A basic keyword search will find background information)
Renaissance and women

Search Two: (Add alternate terms to find more information):
Renaissance and (women or gender)

Search Three: (Add additional terms to narrow your results):
Shakespeare and Renaissance and (women or gender)

See the boxes on this page with Selected Books on Context and Selected Books on Genre to see samples of the types of books you can find in the library catalog using these simple search strategies.

Selected Books on Genre

Here is a selection of books on genre that can be founding by searching simply for comedy or tragedy. Many additional books on genre can be found in the library catalog using similar search strategies.

The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy by Eric Weitz
Call Number: PN1922 .C27 2009
ISBN: 9780521832601
Publication Date: 2009-04-16
'Laughter', says Eric Weitz, 'may be considered one of the most extravagant physical effects one person can have on another without touching them'. But how do we identify something which is meant to be comic, what defines something as 'comedy', and what does this mean for the way we enter the world of a comic text? Addressing these issues, and many more, this is a 'how to' guide to reading comedy from the pages of a dramatic text, with relevance to anything from novels and newspaper columns to billboards and emails. The book enables you to enhance your grasp of the comic through familiarity with characteristic structures and patterns, referring to comedy in literature, film and television throughout. Perfect for drama and literature students, this Introduction explores a genre which affects the everyday lives of us all, and will therefore also capture the interest of anyone who loves to laugh.
Tragedy by Clifford Leech
Call Number: Electronic book
ISBN: 0203407857
Publication Date: 1969-09-01
Professor Leech considers the significance of the term 'Tragedy' as it has been used from classical times to the present day. He gives examples of tragic writing from a wide variety of dramatic literatures and relates theoretical writings on tragedy and the tragedies that have been contemporaneous with them. Free reference is made to critics from Aristotle to these of the present. Special stress is laid on the tragedies of the Greeks, of Renaissance writers and of our immediate contemporaries, notably Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. There is also discussion of tragic writing in the modern novel.