Description
Book SynopsisDemonstrates how the study of Shakespeare’s afterlife, specifically in film and television, can clarify both the historical context of his drama and its relevance for the current political moment.
Trade Review“
Uncanny Fidelity makes a rich and creative contribution not only to the field of adaptation studies but also to Shakespeare criticism in general, as it deploys its scholarly resources with aplomb and, as befits the book, originality. One of its refreshing features, especially for a work of modern popular culture, is a continual engagement with the materials of the Renaissance—the histories, the social and theatrical conflicts that enlivened and sometimes disturbed the era, and the criticism about the literature of the time—which gives us the impression that, even when reading about films from only five years ago, we are never far from the early modern period.”—Eric S. Mallin author of
Reading Shakespeare in the Movies: Non-Adaptations and
Their Meaning and Godless Shakespeare “'Tell all the truth but tell it slant.' This slantwise tour of uncanny Shakespearean repetitions helps us reevaluate what we long since thought was familiar. From a 'wild' reading of
The Master to a Badiou-inflected examination of
Deadwood, Newlin ponders how we can 'be awake to the possibility of this sort of faithful resuscitation of Shakespeare.'”—Scott Newstok, author of
How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education "James Newlin sees our contemporary culture as an uncanny adaptation of Shakespeare’s own documentation of the world. The Bard’s appearances and reappearances— rather like the profanity in the HBO series
Deadwood— bring to audiences jolts of recognition and reversal of what Shakespeare already knew. We would be wrong to resist Newlin’s claims: for even Jane Austen presciently proclaims: 'Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. ...[O]ne is intimate with him by instinct.' Bearing such intimacy by instinct in mind, Newlin takes up TV and movie gems from
Brigsby Bear to
Manchester by the Sea, from
Vice Principals to
The Master, to uncover, and to offer, a Shakespeare for our times who uncannily already told the story of the moment."—Vera J. Camden, co-editor of
American Imago and American editor for the
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics.
