Shakespearian and Other Essays

Originally published in 1974, this volume presents essays on Shakespeare's comedies by the late James Smith.

James Smith (Author)

9780521134606, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 March 2010

360 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2 cm, 0.46 kg

The late James Smith was a polymath scholar and critic, known to a large circle of readers for one or two critical articles of great weight and acuteness. As a busy professor in the University of Fribourg, he published very little more, but was working all his life on two uncompleted books, one on Shakespeare, one on the tradition of English literature. At his death, a good deal was in draft. Originally published in 1974, this volume, edited by Professor E. M. Wilson, presents a coherent body of essays on Shakespeare's comedies, and adds at the end five of the essays for which Smith was already well known. This is more than a literary memorial to a highly self-critical scholar who published little. It is a body of studies which was welcomed and prized by those familiar with Smith's name. New readers meanwhile will find in this principal critical work the expression of a vigorous and sensitive critical mind.

Prefatory note
1. As You Like It
2. Much Ado About Nothing
3. The Merchant of Venice
4. All's Well That Ends Well
5. Measure For Measure - a fragment
6. The Winter's Tale
7. The Tempest
8. On metaphysical poetry
9. Wordsworth: a preliminary survey
10. Baudelaire
11. Croce
12. On William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity
James Smith (1904–1972).

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]