Shakespeare
Johann Gottfried Herder
Translated, edited, and with an introduction by Gregory Moore

Cloth | 2008 | $12.95 / £7.95
128 pp. | 4 x 6

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Without Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), we simply would not understand Shakespeare in the way we do. In fact, much literature and art besides Shakespeare would neither look the same nor be the same without the influence of Herder's "Shakespeare" (1773). One of the most important and original works in the history of literary criticism, this passionate essay pioneered a new, historicist approach to cultural artifacts by arguing that they should be judged not by their conformity to a set of conventions imported from another time and place, but by the effectiveness of their response to their own historical and cultural context. Rejecting the authority of a dominant and stifling French neoclassicism that judged eighteenth-century plays by the criteria of Aristotle, Herder's "Shakespeare" signaled a break with the Enlightenment, the approach of Romanticism, and the arrival of a distinctly modern form of aesthetic appreciation.

With a vivid new translation and a fascinating introduction by Gregory Moore, this edition of Herder's classic will speak to today's readers with undiminished power and persuasiveness.

Gregory Moore is lecturer in German at the University of St. Andrews. He is the editor and translator of Herder's Selected Writings on Aesthetics (Princeton) and the author of Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor.

Endorsement:

"Herder's essay on Shakespeare is not an antique. It has the same vitalizing power as the grand sequence of English critical Shakespeareans: Dr. Johnson, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Bradley, Empson, Kermode, and Nuttall. Gregory Moore's translation and introduction alike are admirably eloquent and illuminating."--Harold Bloom

Table of Contents:

Introduction GREGORY MOORE
Shakespeare
JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER
Editor's Notes
Index

Another Princeton book by Johann Gottfried Herder:

• Selected Writings on Aesthetics.

Another Princeton book by Gregory Moore:

• Selected Writings on Aesthetics.

Subject Areas:

• British Literature
• Comparative Literature
• Literature: Primary Works and Letters

Shopping Cart:

For customers in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Australia
Cloth: $12.95 ISBN13: 978-0-691-13535-9

For customers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India
Cloth: £7.95 ISBN13: 978-0-691-13535-9

Prices subject to change without notice

File created: 7/1/2008

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