Life in the Sonnets

This is a passionately argued account of the value of experience and emotion in reading Shakespeare's sonnets and of the importance of reading poetry aloud. Current norms of literary criticism and education tend to ignore the ways in which literary experiences relate to life experience, and some of the ways in which literary experiences themselves can be intensified and deepened. In this vibrant and controversial book, David Fuller seeks to recover the life in Shakespeare's sonnets, arguing that, although feeling and emotion are often ignored in criticism, they should be central to literary experience. He offers two ways of attempting this - first engaging with the poems through the kinds of feeling that are fundamental to the young man sequence as these are presented in other kinds of writing and art - philosophy, poetry, visual art, fiction, music, and film.He then discusses how reading the poems aloud can offer one of the best ways of fully participating in properly engaged reading, showing that dwelling in the words without translating them into other terms allows us to bring out their beauty and expressivity, and ultimately to come to fuller understandings of their form, structure, and meaning. "Shakespeare Now!" is a series of short books that engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays. It goes back to the source - the most living language imaginable - and recaptures the excitement, audacity and surprise of Shakespeare. It will return you to the plays with opened eyes.

David Fuller is Emeritus Professor of English in the University of Durham, UK. From 2002 to 2007 he was the University's Orator. He trained as a musicologist, and has written on a range of literary topics from Medieval to Modern. He is the author of Blake's Heroic Argument (1988), James Joyce's 'Ulysses' (1992), Signs of Grace (with David Brown, 1995). He has edited Tamburlaine the Great (1998) for the Clarendon Press complete works of Marlowe, co-edited (with Patricia Waugh) The Arts and Sciences of Criticism (OUP, 1999), and edited Blake: Selected Poetry and Prose (Longman, 2000, 2008).