Romeo and JulietContributors to this Volume: James Bemis ""Star-crossed"" Romeo and Juliet are Shakespeare's most famous lovers. A staple of high school reading lists, the tragedy especially resonates with young adult readers who, like Romeo and Juliet, have experienced the exhilarating and perilous phenomenon of being ""in love"". Given the tragic ending of the play, what does Shakespeare illustrate about his teen protagonists: Are they the hapless victims of fate, or are they responsible for the poor choices they make? Is their love the ""real thing"", or is it self-indulgent passion run amok? These are some of the ever relevant questions discussed in this critical edition of Romeo and Juliet. The Ignatius Critical Editions represent a tradition-oriented alternative to popular textbook series such as the Norton Critical Editions or Oxford World Classics, and are designed to concentrate on traditional readings of the Classics of world literature. While many modern critical editions have succumbed to the fads of modernism and post-modernism, this series will concentrate on tradition-oriented criticism of these great works. Edited by acclaimed literary biographer, Joseph Pearce, the Ignatius Critical Editions will ensure that traditional moral readings of the works are given prominence, instead of the feminist, or deconstructionist readings that often proliferate in other series of 'critical editions'. As such, they represent a genuine extension of consumer-choice, enabling educators, students and lovers of good literature to buy editions of classic literary works without having to 'buy into' the ideologies of secular fundamentalism. |
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... Venice, see Joseph Pearce, Through Shake- speare's Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), chapters 6 and 7. 5See, for instance, Crystal Downing, “A Rose by Any Other xii Joseph Pearce.
... eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with loving tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet. (1.1.188–92) Love, for Romeo, is a blinding force; it is smoke that gets into the lover's eyes, a ...
... eyes, Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold. (1.1.206–12) In these few pregnant lines we learn enough about Rosaline to know that she is not elusively unattainable in the same sense as Petrarch's Laura. She is not simply—or at any rate ...
... eyes on Juliet. Does Juliet cause a miraculous change in the young man, teaching him how to love truly, as romantic readers of the play believe, or does his residual selfishness and self-absorption contribute to the lovers' downfall ...
... eye in response to great physical beauty? This, at any rate, seems to be the question that Shakespeare, via the Chorus, is asking. The question is asked again, immediately, by Mercutio, in his savage lampooning of Petrarchan love (2.1.8 ...