Secondary Sources - Books - ENGL 118: Shakespeare and the Middle Ages (HC)

Identifying Relevant Books

All books owned by libraries in the tri-co can be accessed through Tripod.

To find books that are relevant to your research topic, you can begin by developing search terms that speak to your particular interests.

Once you've identified a relevant book, you can find more like it by looking at the "Similar Items" list on the right-hand side of the catalog entry.

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Beyond the Tri-College Collections

If you are interested in a book not owned by the Tri-College Libraries, you should first turn to E-ZBorrow, which gives you access to book collections at a number of local colleges and universities. It usually takes about three days for E-Z Borrow books to arrive.

Books not available through E-Z borrow can be obtained through Interlibrary Loan (ILL), and will arrive, once you submit the form, in as little as four to five days.

To get bibliographic information on books not owned by the Tri-College Libraries, you can turn to WorldCat. This is a combined library catalog containing more than 179 million records describing items owned by libraries around the world. Many of these titles are available to you though interlibrary loan.

WorldCat
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A catalog of the holdings of books, journals, and other materials held by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) member libraries. Includes manuscripts, maps, films and sound recordings. Covers works published before 1,000 BC-present.

Selected Books

Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics by Andrew Hadfield (Editor)
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ISBN: 1903436176
Publication Date: 2003-09-04
Shakespeare, like many of his contemporaries, was concerned with the question of the succession and the legitimacy of the monarch. From the early plays through the histories to Hamlet, Shakespeare's work is haunted by the problem of political legitimacy. Shakespeare and Reniassance Politics examines his works as political events and interventions, and explores the literature of the Renaissance and its relation to fundamental political issues.
Shakespeare's Medieval Craft by Kurt A. Schreyer
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ISBN: 0801455103
Publication Date: 2014-08-01
In Shakespeare's Medieval Craft, Kurt A. Schreyer explores the relationship between Shakespeare's plays and a tradition of late medieval English biblical drama known as mystery plays. Scholars of English theater have long debated Shakespeare's connection to the mystery play tradition, but Schreyer provides new perspective on the subject by focusing on the Chester Banns, a sixteenth-century proclamation announcing the annual performance of that city's cycle of mystery plays. Through close study of the Banns, Schreyer demonstrates the central importance of medieval stage objects--as vital and direct agents and not merely as precursors--to the Shakespearean stage. As Schreyer shows, the Chester Banns serve as a paradigm for how Shakespeare's theater might have reflected on and incorporated the mystery play tradition, yet distinguished itself from it. For instance, he demonstrates that certain material features of Shakespeare's stage--including the ass's head of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the theatrical space of Purgatory in Hamlet, and the knocking at the gate in the Porter scene of Macbeth--were in fact remnants of the earlier mysteries transformed to meet the exigencies of the commercial London playhouses. Schreyer argues that the ongoing agency of supposedly superseded theatrical objects and practices reveal how the mystery plays shaped dramatic production long after their demise. At the same time, these medieval traditions help to reposition Shakespeare as more than a writer of plays; he was a play-wright, a dramatic artisan who forged new theatrical works by fitting poetry to the material remnants of an older dramatic tradition.