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by Erica Sheen (Editor), Isabel Karremann (Editor)
Back Jacket
This essay collection examines the Shakespearian culture of Cold War Europe - Germany, France, UK, USSR, Poland, Spain and Hungary - from 1947/8 to the end of the 1970s. Written by international Shakespearians who are also scholars of the Cold War, the essays assembled here consider representative events, productions and performances as cultural politics, international diplomacy and sites of memory, and show how they inform our understanding of the political, economic, even military, dynamics of the post-war global order. The volume explores the political and cultural function of Shakespearian celebration and commemoration, but it also acknowledges the conflicts they generated across the European Cold War 'theatre', examining the impact of Cold War politics on Shakespearian performance, criticism and scholarship. Drawing on archival material, and presenting its sources both in their original language and in translation, it offers historically and theoretically nuanced accounts of Shakespeare's international significance in the divided world of Cold War Europe, and its legacy today.
Author Biography
Erica Sheen is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Film at the University of York, UK. She is the author of Shakespeare and the Institution of Theatre: The Best in this Kind (Palgrave 2009). Other publications include co-edited volumes on Renaissance law and literature (2004) and David Lynch (2004). She is currently finishing a monograph on Cold War Shakespeare.
Isabel Karremann is Professor of English Literature at Würzburg University, Germany. She is the author of The Drama of Memory in Shakespeare's History Plays (2015) and co-editor of two essay collections on the negotiation of confessional conflict in literature, drama and cultural practice across early modern Europe (2011) and England (2016).
