Joseph M. Ortiz

How theatre directors, actors, poets, women writers, political philosophers, gallery owners and other professionals in the nineteenth century turned to Shakespeare in myriad ways to advance their own political, artistic, or commercial agendas is the subject of this collection. Whether Whig or Tory, male or female, intellectual or commercial, Romantic writers found in Shakespeare a powerful medium through which to claim authority for their particular interests.

Shakespeare and the Culture of Romanticism

The idea of Shakespearean genius and sublimity is usually understood to be a product of the Romantic period, promulgated by poets such as Coleridge and Byron who promoted Shakespeare as the supreme example of literary genius and creative imagination. However, the picture looks very different when viewed from the perspective of the myriad theater directors, actors, poets, political philosophers, gallery owners, and other professionals in the nineteenth century who turned to Shakespeare to advance their own political, artistic, or commercial interests. Often, as in John Kemble’s staging of The Winter’s Tale at Drury Lane or John Boydell’s marketing of paintings in his Shakespeare Gallery, Shakespeare provided a literal platform on which both artists and entrepreneurs could strive to influence cultural tastes and points of view. At other times, Romantic writers found in Shakespeare’s works a set of rhetorical and theatrical tools through which to form their own public personae, both poetic and political. Women writers in particular often adapted Shakespeare to express their own political and social concerns. Taken together, all of these critical and aesthetic responses attest to the remarkable malleability of the Shakespearean corpus in the Romantic period. As the contributors show, Romantic writers of all persuasions”Whig and Tory, male and female, intellectual and commercial”found in Shakespeare a powerful medium through which to claim authority for their particular interests.

Music was a subject of considerable debate during the Renaissance. The notion that music could be interpreted in a meaningful way clashed regularly with evidence that music was in fact profoundly promiscuous in its application and effects. Subsequently, much writing in the period reflects a desire to ward off music’s illegibility rather than come to terms with its actual effects. In Broken Harmony Joseph M. Ortiz revises our understanding of music’s relationship to language in Renaissance England. In the process he shows the degree to which discussions of music were ideologically and politically charged. Offering a historically nuanced account of the early modern debate over music, along with close readings of several of Shakespeare’s plays (including Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale) and Milton’s A Maske, Ortiz challenges the consensus that music’s affinity with poetry was widely accepted, or even desired, by Renaissance poets. Shakespeare more than any other early modern poet exposed the fault lines in the debate about music’s function in art, repeatedly staging disruptive scenes of music that expose an underlying struggle between textual and sensuous authorities. Such musical interventions in textual experiences highlight the significance of sound as an aesthetic and sensory experience independent of any narrative function.

Shakespeare and the Politics of Music

Broken Harmony

Myron Yanoff

Jesse L. Berry

Alan S. Crandall

Paul B. Freeman

Ronni M. Lieberman

Leonard J. Press

Aparna Ramasubramanian

Narsing Rao

Madhura A. Tamhankar

An Vo

Allan E. Wulc

Advances in Ophthalmology and Optometry reviews the most current practices in both ophthalmology and optometry. A distinguished editorial board, headed by Dr. Myron Yanoff, identifies key areas of major progress and controversy and invites expert ophthalmologists and optometrists to contribute original articles devoted to these topics. Topics covered this volume include, but are not limited to, technology in the evolution of eye care, myopia, anti-VEGF medications in retinopathy of prematurity, current management of retinoblastoma, secondary angle-closure glaucoma, management of conjunctival bleb leaks, newer therapies for giant cell arteritis, nystagmus, corneal crosslinking, corneal inlays for treatment of presbyopia, orbital floor management, refinements in the conjunctivomullerectomy procedure, emerging intraocular infections of global significance, and recent advances in ocular imaging, among others.

Advances in Ophthalmology and Optometry, E-Book

Joseph M. Ortiz

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