Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature: Three Volume Set Volume I A-F Volume II G-P Volume III Q-Z (Athlone Shakespeare Dictionary) [Hardcover]

Gordon Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 13, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0485113937 | ISBN-13: 978-0485113938

Providing an alphabetical listing of sexual language and locution in 16th and 17th-century English, this book draws especially on the more immediate literary modes: the theatre, broadside ballads, newsbooks and pamphlets. The aim is to assist the reader of Shakespearean and Stuart literature to identify metaphors and elucidate meanings; and more broadly, to chart, through illustrative quotation, shifting and recurrent linguistic patterns. Linguistic habit is closely bound up with the ideas and assumptions of a period, and the figurative language of sexuality across this period is highly illuminating of socio-cultural change as well as linguistic development. Thus the entries offer as much to those concerned with social history and the history of ideas as to the reader of Shakespeare or Dryden. Gordon Williams has also published "Coriolanus" (a Macmillan Master Guide, 1987); and "Macbeth" (a Macmillan Text and Performance book, 1985).

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An indispensable resource...an immense repository of data about sexual folklore and sexual practices."--Times Higher Education Supplement

"Tremendous value to students of sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth century literature and culture."--Early Modern Literary Studies

"A prodigious project, for which historians of sexuality and social, literary and art historians and critics can be grateful."--Journal of the History of Sexuality

"Deserves a place in all academic libraries and should quickly become a standard reference work for anyone interested in the language of the early modern period."--Sixteenth Century Journal

About the Author

Gordon Williams is Reader in English at the University of Wales, Lampeter. Previous books include A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature (3 vols, Athlone, 1994) and Shakespeare, Sex and the Print Revolution (Athlone, 1996).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: The Athlone Press (September 13, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0485113937
• ISBN-13: 978-0485113938
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,679,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most exhaustive treatment of its subject, October 2, 2001

By 

Joost Daalder "Joost Daalder" (South Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature: Three Volume Set Volume I A-F Volume II G-P Volume III Q-Z (Athlone Shakespeare Dictionary) (Hardcover)

This monumental work in three large volumes is the one which I use most frequently when wanting to inform myself on the use of "bawdy", or sexually "indecent" language or imagery, in Renaissance literature (especially plays, but also poetry like Donne's). The author has for one thing assembled a much larger range of examples to illustrate sexual meanings than are provided by any other scholars. In the case of this area of language, that really matters. Many readers, even today, vastly underrate the frequency of sexual meanings in e.g. Shakespeare or other Renaissance dramatists. The truth is that they and their audiences were almost addictively fond of sexual jokes, and these often are not understood by people today, or at best glimpsed as just possibly a local "quibble". What Williams shows is that most of such instances of word-play are not at all incidental, but so frequent that one can in fact speak of a sexual "language" or "code" which was clearly widely shared and understood during the period he covers. This can only be done by producing MANY examples of a particular usage, as he does. He also demonstrates that many hitherto "unsuspected" words frequently carried a sexual meaning. Neither he nor I want to suggest that the sexual meaning is usually the ONLY (or even the DOMINANT) meaning in all but a limited number of words which are "merely" sexual. Our point is, rather, that many seemingly "innocuous" words are so frequently used in a sexual sense that that sense should not be seen as something occasional or additional, but as commonplace and central.

The dictionary is, for all its comprehensiveness, by no means complete. See for example Joost Daalder and Antony Telford Moore, "*Mandrakes* and *Whiblins* in *The Honest Whore*" (*Studies in Philology*, Fall 1997, 494-507) as a discussion of words not adequately covered - or understood - by Williams. Another word he does not list (or at least not as a separate entry) is *thatch* for "pubic hair". And there certainly are other omissions. Nevertheless, this work far more often helps one out than it lets one down, and it is difficult to see how any editor of a Renaissance play containing sexual punning (and many do!) can afford to ignore this work. All university libraries should own it as an important reference tool. - Joost Daalder, Profesor of English, South Australia