Viewing Shakespearean romance as a poetic response to the metaphysical problems of “mutability” and man’s place in nature, the author has selected The Winter’s Tale to illustrate his hypothesis. His critical study—from a perspective gained through comparative references to a large number of works by other Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights—rejects the traditional notion that Shakespeare deliberately created a fantasy world in which the happy ending signified an escape from reality and interprets the tone of the romance in terms of an all-encompassing vision in which time and change are accepted as life-fulfilling forces.

LeBaron Russell Briggs Prize Honors Essays in English 1966
The Natural Work of Art
The Experience of Romance in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale
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PAPERBACK
$14.50 • £12.95 • €13.95
ISBN 9780674604506
Publication Date: 01/01/1967