Description: The Tempest: Critical Tradition increases our knowledge of how Shakespeare's plays were received and understood by critics, editors and general readers. The volume offers, in separate sections, both critical opinions about the play across the centuries and an evaluation of their positions within and their impact on the reception of the play. The volume features criticism from key literary figures, such as Ben Jonson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Dryden, John Ruskin and Edward Malone. The chronological arrangement of the text-excerpts engages the readers in a direct and unbiased dialogue, whereas the introduction offers a critical evaluation from a current stance, including modern theories and methods. Thus the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the play and of the traditions of Shakespearean criticism surrounding it as they have developed from century to century.
Brief description: Brinda Charry is Associate Professor of English at Syracuse University, USA. Born and raised in India, she completed her doctoral degree at Syracuse University, NY before moving to Keene in 2005 to teach early modern British literature and culture. Her areas of research and scholarship include Shakespeare, intercultural encounters in the 16th and 17th centuries, and constructions of race and religious difference in the time period. Charry is also a writer of fiction and has published two novels The Hottest Day of the Year and Naked in the Wind, as well as a collection of short-stories entitled First Love.