Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture (Oxford Shakespeare Topics) [Paperback]

Douglas Lanier (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0198187068 | ISBN-13: 978-0198187066 | Publication Date: November 7, 2002

Our notions of Shakespeare have been shaped partly by his diffuse presence in films, comics, television, popular novels, kitsch, and advertising. Through a series of case studies, Douglas Lanier examines how modern popular culture has appropriated and refashioned Shakespeare as a cultural icon.

Editorial Reviews

Review

very accessible in their presentation of the material as well as easy and enjoyable to read ... Lanier's book is an important addition to the series and can be warmly recommended to both students, professionals and all those wanting to understand Shakespeare as a cultural icon. Christa Jansohn, Anglistik If you have not already seen this series [Oxford Shakespeare Topics], you must get to it now. It is reader-friendly and reliable. Chronique This book would serve well as a primer to the subject of modern Shakespeare appropriation, perfect for upper-level undergraduates. Virginia Quarterly Review Lanier finds a multitude of strange and wonderful instances of how our culture uses Shakespeare. Virginia Quarterly Review In a short and readable book Lanier has broken new ground for the consideration of Shakespeare's status in contemporary culture, as well as providing rich and enjoyable material for further exploration. Around The Globe In Lanier's hands we are made aware of how deeply ingrained Shakespeare has become in the world, and how popular culture continues to express split opinions about his importance and authority, simultaneously attracted to his usefulness and resistant to his dominance. Around The Globe An important addition to the series and a major contribution to Shakespeare studies, the first book that provides a general outline of how the playwright has been and continues to be used in popular culture, and what influence mass culture has in turn had on attitudes to him. Around The Globe

About the Author

Douglas Lanier is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, English Department, University of New Hampshire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198187068
• ISBN-13: 978-0198187066
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #680,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Think You Know Shakespeare? Nobody Does., July 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture (Oxford Shakespeare Topics) (Paperback)

Douglas Lanier provides a fascinating account of how the man Shakespeare has been lionized, sanitized, and satirized over the three hundred years since he was first promoted as England's national poet in the 1730's. Since then, Shakespeare and the plays he wrote for the popular Elizabethan theatre have been appropriated by different cultural factions, both high and low, to advance particular ideas of what constitutes (or does not constitute) "proper" cultural ideals. Lanier examines how this has happened in the past and continues to happen in the present.
Each chapter of Lanier's book focuses on a different aspect of what he calls "Shakespop." Lanier skillfully portrays the long historical process of elevating Shakespeare's plays to the peak of English high culture. This process began with the publication of the First Folio in 1623, thereby preserving plays written to be performed in the Elizabethan playhouse as timeless literature. Before long, Shakespeare's works were promoted as emblematic of a natural English realism against the classical standards of dramatic economy in time and action as represented by the Englishman's perpetual enemies, the French. Lanier offers extensive demonstration that since that time Shakespeare's plays-and increasingly the image of Shakespeare himself as a "natural genius"-has continued to play a leading role in cultural warfare. Alluding to Shakespeare's works or citing them is a means of indicating a connection to high culture or making a protest against that culture. The plays have been used and abused in adaptations and parodies, while the constant reinvention of Shakespeare the man has served to suit different cultural needs, either for the cultural elite or those who feel dispossessed by them. Lanier concludes with a fascinating overview of the phenomenon of Shakespeare tourism and Shakespeare theatre festivals that serve to give tourists both a quick dose of high culture and a sense of getting to know the "real" Shakespeare, either by visiting his hometown of Stratford or seeing one of his plays performed in an recreated Elizabethan theatre with historical costume. Lanier illustrates his points admirably with a host of pertinent examples from British and American culture, high, low and middling, and insightfully dissects those examples to expose their hidden assumptions and agendas.
Because this is a short study, many readers will wish Lanier had addressed their own particular interests in popular culture. Although he cites examples from television, books, comics, and animated cartoons, I would have liked to read more of his reflections on the ways Shakespeare works are mediated to children in American popular culture. As a non-specialist, I'm also interested in the connection between Shakespeare and the ham actor, as for example in Ernst Lubitsch's film "To Be or Not to Be." But the reader's desire for more is an indication of how provocative and interesting Lanier's study is for both the professional and the amateur Shakespearean. (And Lanier makes his readers aware of how fraught with meaning those two designations are!) Ultimately, we find, most of us don't know the man Shakespeare at all-only his image and the place he's been assigned in our cultural hierarchy by admirers and detractors alike.