Shakespeare and Modern Culture

From one of the world's premier Shakespeare scholars comes a magisterial new study whose premise is "that Shakespeare makes modern culture and that modern culture makesShakespeare."

Shakespeare has determined many of the ideas that we think of as "naturally" true: ideas about human character, individuality and selfhood, government, leadership, love and jealousy, men and women, youth and age. Marjorie Garber delves into ten plays to explore the interrelationships between Shakespeare and contemporary culture, from James Joyce's "Ulysses" to George W. Bush's reading list. From the persistence of difference in "Othello" to the matter of character in "Hamlet" to the untimelinessof youth in "Romeo and Juliet," Garber discusses how these ideas have been re-imagined in modern fiction, theater, film, and the news, and in the literature of psychology, sociology, political theory, business, medicine, and law. Shakespeare and Modern Culture is a brilliant recasting of our own mental and emotional landscape as refracted through the prism of the proteanShakespeare.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."