Introduction 1. The Tudor Myth 2. Martin’s Shakespeare 3. The Shakespearean Slingshot 4. Composition History and Co(rporate)-Authorship 5. From True Tragedy to Historical Fantasy 6. Comical-Tragical-Historical-Pastoral: Mixed Genre 7. Narrative Relief: From Comedy to Nudity 8. Spectacle and Success from the Medieval Church Service to CGI 9. Game of Thrones as Shakespearean Performance: Interviews with the Actors 10. External Predictability, Internal Unpredictability 11. Eddard as Gloucester: De Casibus Virorum Illustrum 12. Wars of Roses: A Literary Trope in Social Life 13. The Stigmatized Protagonist: The Tragic Model and the Heroic Model 14. Girl Power: Mimetic Feminism and Rhetorical Misogyny 15. Generic Bias: Gender, Race, Criticism 16. The Bloody Hand: Intertextual Metatheater 17. The Targaryen Myth 18. How George R.R. Martin Changed the Ending of Game Of Thrones 19. Fandom as IKEA Effect
Biography
Jeffrey R. Wilson is a faculty member in the Writing Program at Harvard University, USA, where he teaches the Why Shakespeare? section of the university’s first-year writing course. Focused on intersections of Renaissance literature and modern sociology, his work has appeared in the academic journals Modern Language Quarterly, Genre, and College Literature, and public venues like National Public Radio, Salon, and MLA’s Profession.
