Ecocritical Shakespeare /

These 13 essays are united by the theme of continuity: Shakespeare's work explores a human continuity with the natural world and ecocritical approaches to his work span a continuum between historicism and presentism. Readers experienced in ecocriticism will find the essays' comments on the broad social and political implications familiar ground, but newcomers will value some contributors' efforts to link early-modern and contemporary concepts of ecology at work in the plays (this is especially true of Robert Watson, Gabriel Egan, and Dan Brayton). Close readings favor the comedies and tragedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, The Tempest, King Lear). Though in her essay Lynn Bruckner offers a brief discussion of Gaunt's speech in Richard II, one would like to see more attention to the history plays' tension between land as a territory to be possessed and as a vital, natural context of humanity. Explorations in feminist ecocriticism are represented in J. A. Shea and Paul Yachnin's essay on Shrew and Jennifer Munroe's treatment of The Winter's Tale. The bibliography runs to 23 pages. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates and above. C. Baker Armstrong Atlantic State University