Description

Book Synopsis

A gripping, funny, joyful account of how the books you read shape your own life in surprising and profound ways.
Bookworms know what scholars of literature are trained to forget: that when they devour a work of literary fiction, whatever else they may be doing, they are reading about themselves. Read Shakespeare, and you become Cleopatra, Hamlet, or Bottom. Or at the very least, you experience the plays as if you are in a small room alone with them, and they are speaking to your life, your sensibility.
Drawing on fifty years as a Shakespearean, Leonard Barkan has produced a captivating book that asks us to reconsider what it means to read. Barkan violates the rule of distance he was taught and has always taught his students. He asks: Where does this brilliantly contrived fiction actually touch me? Where is Shakespeare in effect telling the story of my life?
King Lear, for Barkan, raises unanswerable questions about what exactly a father does after

Reading Shakespeare Reading Me

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    A Paperback by Leonard Barkan

    £15.19

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    RRP £15.99 – you save £0.80 (5%)

    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Sat 17 Oct 2026.

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      Book details

      Publisher Fordham University Press
      Published 4 February 2024
      ISBN-13 9781531507312
      978-1531507312
      ISBN-10 153150731X
      Also in:
      Autobiography: writers

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      A gripping, funny, joyful account of how the books you read shape your own life in surprising and profound ways.
      Bookworms know what scholars of literature are trained to forget: that when they devour a work of literary fiction, whatever else they may be doing, they are reading about themselves. Read Shakespeare, and you become Cleopatra, Hamlet, or Bottom. Or at the very least, you experience the plays as if you are in a small room alone with them, and they are speaking to your life, your sensibility.
      Drawing on fifty years as a Shakespearean, Leonard Barkan has produced a captivating book that asks us to reconsider what it means to read. Barkan violates the rule of distance he was taught and has always taught his students. He asks: Where does this brilliantly contrived fiction actually touch me? Where is Shakespeare in effect telling the story of my life?
      King Lear, for Barkan, raises unanswerable questions about what exactly a father does after

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