Shakespeare in Theory and Practice

In these essays, brought together here for the first time, world-renowned critic Catherine Belsey puts theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction.

`All of the essays attest to Belsey''s career-long commitment to theory and its ability to deliver new ways of reading... Her attention in this collection to materiality and wordplay is indicative of her considerable skills as a close reader''. Shakespeare Survey

`These are essay of love, as well as about love, and this makes them unusually sensitive ... Belsey''s insistence on the anarchy of desire seems both timely and genuinely radical''. Times Literary supplement

In these essays brought together here for the first time, world-renowned critic Catherine Belsey puts theory to work in order to demonstrate the possibilities of an attention to textuality that also takes account of history. She teases out the meanings of the narrative poems, as well as some of the plays, while a reading of the Sonnets, written specially for this book, explores their subtle power to seduce.

Belsey has been a vital figure in poststructuralist theory as it has developed in the English-speaking world. The introduction offers a participant''s narrative and analytical overview of three decades of psychoanalysis and deconstruction.

Written with verve and conviction, this book shows how texts can be seen to offer access to the dissonances of the past when theory finds an outcome in practice.