Shakespeare and Carnival After Bakhtin

This collection of essays is the first to reassess a range of Shakespeare's plays in relation to carnivalesque theory. Contributors re-historicize the carnivalesque in different ways, offering both a developed application, or critique of, Bakhtin's thought.

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; R.Knowles A Short Report and Not Otherwise: Jack Cade in 2 Henry VI ; S.Longstaffe Carnival and Death in Romeo and Juliet ; R.Knowles The Carnivalesque in A Midsummer Night's Dream ; D.Wiles Shakespeare's 'Battle of Carnival and Lent'. The Falstaff Scenes Reconsidered ( 1&2 Henry IV ); F.Laroque Facing Puritanism: Falstaff, Martin Marpetlate and the Grotesque Puritan; K.Poole The Evacuations of Falstaff ( The Merry Wives of Windsor ); J.Hall Towards a Theory of Play and the Carnivalesque in Hamlet ; P.Gorfain Shakespeare's Carnival and the Sacred. Measure For Measure and The Winter's Tale ; A.Gash 'Swimming on Bladders': the Dialogics of Reformation in Shakespeare & Fletcher's Henry VIII ; G.McMullan Index

RONALD KNOWLES is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and has taught at the University of Reading since 1971. His recent books include Henry IV 1&2. 'The Critics Debate', Understanding Harold Pinter and Gulliver's Travels. The Politics of Satire. He has written many articles on Pinter and Shakespeare and is Associate Editor in Britain of The Pinter Reviews. Currently he is editing 2 Henry VI for the Arden Shakespeare.