Jay L. Halio

After an historical survey of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from Shakespeare's time through to the 19th century, Jay Halio focuses primarily on 20th century productions and adaptations, for film and television as well as for the stage. Chapters are devoted to productions by Max Reinhardt, Peter Hall, Robert Lepage, and especially to Peter Brook's landmark production in 1970 and the reactions to it. Using a wealth of personal experience, as well as original promptbooks and critical reviews, Halio shows how differently but still very effectively the play may be staged, as the wide variety of plays he records. This second, enlarged edition contains three new chapters on Adrian Noble's RSC production and film, Michael Hoffman's film, and the "Dream "in China. Written in clear, jargon-free language, this is the only book so far in print that offers an extended study of major 20th-century productions of the "Dream "in their historical context.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Ben Siegel

The essays in this book focus on a wide and representative variety of Jewish American women writers, including Cynthia Ozick, Anne Roiphe, Erica Jong, Pauline Kael, Allegra Goodman, Norma Rosen, Adrienne Rich, Lynn Sharon Schwartz, and others. In every instance the contributors have tried to deal not only with the Jewish content of their work but also with its literary quality and other major themes.

Contemporary Jewish American Women Writers

Daughters of Valor

British Novelists Since 1960: A-G

This reference covers the comedy's genesis, history, characters, plot, themes, and reception.

A Guide to the Play

The fullest and most comprehensive study of Romeo and Juliet in years, this book examines every aspect of the play, including texts and contexts, thematic and critical issues, and performances.

Romeo and Juliet

In its timeless exploration of familial and political dissolution, and in its relentless questioning of the apparent moral indifference of the universe, King Lear is Shakespeare's darkest tragedy. It is also one of his most timely, for many of the issues it raises resonate loudly within our own era. This reference lucidly overviews King Lear's textual history and intellectual background, its issues and themes, its scholarly and critical reception, and its life in several different productions.

King Lear

Melvin J. Friedman

Comparative Literary Dimensions, like its companion volume American Literary Dimensions, honors the memory of Melvin J. Friedman. The authors studied include James Joyce, Robert Graves, and Virginia Woolf. A wide range of classical and modern writers and literary themes and concepts are discussed by international scholar-critics such as Haskell Block, Zack Bowen, and Owen Aldrich. The volume concludes with Jackson Bryer's detailed bibliography of Melvin Friedman's singular contribution to the study of modern literature.

Essays in Honor of Melvin J. Friedman

Comparative Literary Dimensions

Offers source documents and analysis to provide a historical context for understanding the major themes of Shakespeare's most controversial play.

A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents

Understanding The Merchant of Venice

Professor of English Jay L Halio

Philip Roth is unquestionably one of the major literary voices of our time, one who has combined critical acclaim with a wide readership. Since the publication of Bernard F. Rodgers's Twayne study of Roth (1978), Roth's oeuvre has expanded considerably both in bulk and in range, with the publication of such major works as The Ghost Writer, The Counterlife, and Patrimony. Philip Roth Revisited is an entirely new look at this important writer's life and work. In this sensitive study Jay L. Halio interprets Roth as fundamentally a comic writer in the tradition of that great "sit-down comedian," Franz Kafka. Humor, Halio argues, is for Roth the vehicle of truth. The present volume is more than a study of a single theme in Roth's work, however for Halio gives full consideration to the many complexities of Roth's writings. Roth has always, for instance, been a writer deeply concerned with characteristically Jewish themes, often controversially so, as in his outrageously comic Portnoy's Complaint. Halio places Roth in his Jewish-American milieu, explaining both the similarities and the differences between Roth and other Jewish-American writers, and discussing the reception of Roth's work by the Jewish community. In the latter part of his career, perhaps influenced by the insistence of readers and critics on seeing the author himself in his protagonists, Roth has turned to the complex theme of the interweaving of art and autobiography a concern that has both intrigued and irritated some critics. Halio's analysis of this important element in Roth's work is perhaps the clearest available reading of a notoriously complex subject. Comic, subtle, intelligent, Philip Roth's literary art reps careful and sensitive reading. Halio's study will be valuable to students and scholars of American literature, and to general readers interested in learning about one of America's leading men of letters.

Philip Roth Revisited

After an historical survey of A Midsummer Night's Dream from Shakespeare's time through to the 19th century, Jay Halio focuses primarily on 20th century productions and adaptations, for film and television as well as for the stage. Chapters are devoted to productions by Max Reinhardt, Peter Hall, Robert Lepage, and especially to Peter Brook's landmark production in 1970 and the reactions to it. Using a wealth of personal experience, as well as original promptbooks and critical reviews, Halio shows how differently but still very effectively the play may be staged, as the wide variety of plays he records. This second, enlarged edition contains three new chapters on Adrian Noble's RSC production and film, Michael Hoffman's film, and the Dream in China. Written in clear, jargon-free language, this is the only book so far in print that offers an extended study of major 20th-century productions of the Dream in their historical context.

Jay L. Halio

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