416 Pages
    by Routledge

    416 Pages
    by Routledge

    Originally published in 1930, this classic of modern Shakespeare criticism proves both enlightening and innovative. Standing head and shoulders above all other Shakespearean interpretations, this is the masterwork of the brilliant English scholar, G. Wilson Knight. Founding a new and influential school of Shakespearean criticism, Wheel of Fire was Knight's first venture in the field - his writing sparkles with insight and wit, and his analyses are key to contemporary understandings of Shakespeare.

    Prefatory note -- Introduction by T. S. Eliot -- 1 On the Principles of Shakespeare Interpretation -- 2 The Embassy of Death: an Essay on Hamlet -- 3 The Philosophy of Troilus and Cressida -- 4 Measure for Measure and the Gospels -- 5 The Othello Music -- 6 Brutus and Macbeth -- 7 Macbeth and the Metaphysic of Evil -- 8 King Lear and the Comedy of the Grotesque -- 9 The Lear Universe -- 10 The Pilgrimage of Hate: an Essay on Timon of Athens -- 11 Shakespeare and Tolstoy -- 12 Symbolic Personification -- 13 The Shakespearian Metaphysic -- 14 Tolstoy's Attack on Shakespeare (1934) -- 15 Hamlet Reconsidered (1947) -- Appendix: two notes on the text of hamlet (1947).

    Biography

    G. Wilson Knight (1897-1985). Literary critic, playwright, poet and actor.

    'I confess that reading his essays seems to me to have enlarged my understanding of the Shakespearean pattern, which, after all, is quite the main main thing.' - T.S. Eliot