Ebook: The Anatomy of Insults in Shakespeare’s World

Foul words are both just “foul wind” and “poniards” (Much Ado): The Anatomy of Insults in Shakespeare’s World explores the complexity of Shakespearean insult. It analyses Shakespeare’s art of insults and shows how the playwright set abusive words at the heart of many of his plays. Why are apparently neutral phrases, such as “My lady’s father” (King Lear), treated as insults? How and why does Shakespeare base his plays on insults? This volume provides valuable insights on a key aspect of Shakespeare’s work that has been little explored to date. Focusing on the most memorable scenes of insult, abusive characters and insulting effects in the plays, the volume shifts how readers understand and read Shakespeare’s insults.
Chapters analyse the rhetoric of insult in Henry IV, Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens – plays that illustrate the spectacular festive and acerbic use of abusive words; the “skirmishes of wit” in Much Ado about Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; insult and duelling codes as they appear in Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It and Twelfth Night, and the complex relationships between slander and insult in Much Ado about Nothing, Othello and Measure for Measure.
Offering a theoretical panorama that allows the reader to grasp insult as a specific speech act, the volume explores the issues of verbal violence and verbal shields, the importance of reception and interpretation in matters of insult and offers a panorama of the Elizabethan politics of insult.