All Outputs (16)

Sympathy in Early Modern Literature and Culture (2023)
Book
Meek, R. (2023). Sympathy in Early Modern Literature and Culture. Cambridge University Press (CUP). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009280259

Book description:
This is the first comprehensive study of sympathy in the early modern period, providing a deeply researched and interdisciplinary examination of its development in Anglophone literature and culture. It argues that the term sympathy... Read More about Sympathy in Early Modern Literature and Culture.

‘For by the Image of My Cause, I See / The Portraiture of His’: Hamlet and the Imitation of Emotion (2019)
Book Chapter
Meek, R. (2019). ‘For by the Image of My Cause, I See / The Portraiture of His’: Hamlet and the Imitation of Emotion. In P. Megna, B. Phillips, & R. White (Eds.), Hamlet and emotions (81-108). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03795-6_5

This chapter explores the ways in which Hamlet is part of a larger textual network of mimetic models, and how the play recalls other texts that are concerned with representing emotion. It examines various works from the period that use pictorial meta... Read More about ‘For by the Image of My Cause, I See / The Portraiture of His’: Hamlet and the Imitation of Emotion.

Ekphrastic encounters: New interdisciplinary essays on literature and the visual arts (2018)
Book
Meek, R. (2018). D. Kennedy, & R. Meek (Eds.). Ekphrastic encounters: New interdisciplinary essays on literature and the visual arts. Manchester University Press

This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of ekphrasis: the verbal representation of visual art. Ekphrasis has been traditionally regarded as a form of paragone (competition) between word and image. This interdisciplinary collection of essays see... Read More about Ekphrastic encounters: New interdisciplinary essays on literature and the visual arts.

Close encounters of the third kind : Hamo Thornycroft’s The Mower and Matthew Arnold’s ‘Thyrsis’ (2018)
Book Chapter
Thomas, J. (2018). Close encounters of the third kind : Hamo Thornycroft’s The Mower and Matthew Arnold’s ‘Thyrsis’. In D. Kennedy, & R. Meek (Eds.), Ekphrastic Encounters (165-180). Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526125804.00016

This chapter applies the idea of a non-hierarchical, creative exchange of meaning to Hamo Thornycroft’s 1884 sculpture of The Mower, and its accompanying epigraph from Matthew Arnold’s 1866 elegy for the poet Arthur Hugh Clough: ‘Thyrsis’. The chapte... Read More about Close encounters of the third kind : Hamo Thornycroft’s The Mower and Matthew Arnold’s ‘Thyrsis’.

(S)wept From Power: two versions of tyrannicide in Richard III (2015)
Book Chapter
Kaegi, A. (2015). (S)wept From Power: two versions of tyrannicide in Richard III. In R. Meek, & E. Sullivan (Eds.), The Renaissance of Emotion: understanding affect in Shakespeare and his contemporaries (200-220). Manchester University Press

The Renaissance of emotion: Understanding affect in Shakespeare and his contemporaries (2015)
Book
(2015). R. Meek, & E. Sullivan (Eds.), The Renaissance of emotion: Understanding affect in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press

© Manchester University Press 2015. All right reserved. This collection of essays offers a major reassessment of the meaning and significance of emotional experience in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Recent scholarship on early moder... Read More about The Renaissance of emotion: Understanding affect in Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

'Rue e'en for ruth': Richard II and the imitation of sympathy (2015)
Book Chapter
Meek, R. (2015). 'Rue e'en for ruth': Richard II and the imitation of sympathy. In R. Meek, & E. Sullivan (Eds.), The Renaissance of emotion: Understanding affect in Shakespeare and his contemporaries (130-152). Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9780719090783.003.0007

This chapter examines the various instances of sympathetic engagement and emotional correspondence in Shakespeare’s Richard II. It explores the various figured audiences and emotionally engaged onlookers that the play depicts, and the ways in which t... Read More about 'Rue e'en for ruth': Richard II and the imitation of sympathy.

‘O, what a sympathy of woe is this': passionate sympathy in Titus Andronicus (2013)
Journal Article
Meek, R. (2013). ‘O, what a sympathy of woe is this': passionate sympathy in Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare survey, 66, 287 - 297. https://doi.org/10.1017/SSO9781107300699.021

Various critics have considered Titus Andronicus in relation to questions of language, grief, and violence. In this paper I want to explore a more specific aspect of the play's interest in the passions: its preoccupation with the concept of sympathy.... Read More about ‘O, what a sympathy of woe is this': passionate sympathy in Titus Andronicus.

"This orphan play": Cardenio and the construction of the author (2011)
Journal Article
Meek, R., & Rickard, J. (2011). "This orphan play": Cardenio and the construction of the author. Shakespeare, 7(3), 269-283. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2011.589058

Critical and popular interest in Cardenio/Double Falsehood has focused largely on Shakespeare. Through a combination of Anglocentrism and Shakespeare-centrism, Shakespeare's collaborator, John Fletcher, and the Spanish author of their source, Miguel... Read More about "This orphan play": Cardenio and the construction of the author.

Nothing like the image and horror of it: King Lear and Heart of Darkness (2010)
Journal Article
Meek, R. (2010). Nothing like the image and horror of it: King Lear and Heart of Darkness. Borrowers and lenders: the journal of Shakespeare and appropriation, 5(1),

There are several allusions to King Lear at the end of Heart of Darkness, suggesting that Joseph Conrad might have had Shakespeare in mind during the composition of his novella. Both texts are concerned with the difficulty of producing meaning in the... Read More about Nothing like the image and horror of it: King Lear and Heart of Darkness.

"More than History can Pattern": Shakespeare and Historicism (2010)
Journal Article
Meek, R. (2010). "More than History can Pattern": Shakespeare and Historicism. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 46(2), 221-243. https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqp164

This article explores current debates in Shakespeare studies regarding the claims of historicism and presentism. The article focuses upon Cymbeline and its fascination with the ways in which our attempts both to reconstruct the past and to understand... Read More about "More than History can Pattern": Shakespeare and Historicism.

Narrating the Visual in Shakespeare (2009)
Book
Meek, R. (2009). Narrating the Visual in Shakespeare. The University of Hull. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315248400

This book examines Shakespeare's fascination with the art of narrative and the visuality of language. Richard Meek complicates our conception of Shakespeare as either a 'man of the theatre' or a 'literary dramatist', suggesting ways in which his work... Read More about Narrating the Visual in Shakespeare.

Shakespeare and Narrative (2009)
Journal Article
Meek, R. (2009). Shakespeare and Narrative. Literature compass, 6(2), 482-498. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00621.x

This article explores recent critical work on Shakespeare and narrative. This is a particularly apt time for a reconsideration of this topic, not least because of current debates in Shakespeare studies regarding his status as a ‘literary’ dramatist,... Read More about Shakespeare and Narrative.

Shakespeare's book: Essays in reading, writing and reception (2008)
Book
Meek, R., Rickard, J., & Wilson, R. (Eds.). (2008). Shakespeare's book: Essays in reading, writing and reception. Manchester University Press

This collection of essays is part of a new phase in Shakespeare studies. The traditional view of Shakespeare is that he was a man of the theatre who showed no interest in the printing of his plays, producing works that are only fully realised in perf... Read More about Shakespeare's book: Essays in reading, writing and reception.

"Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak": Wilde, Shakespeare, and the question of influence
Book Chapter
Meek, R. "Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak": Wilde, Shakespeare, and the question of influence. . The University of Hull

‘O, what a sympathy of woe is this' : passionate sympathy in Titus Andronicus
Book Chapter
Meek, R. ‘O, what a sympathy of woe is this' : passionate sympathy in Titus Andronicus.

Various critics have considered Titus Andronicus in relation to questions of language, grief, and violence. In this paper I want to explore a more specific aspect of the play's interest in the passions: its preoccupation with the concept of sympathy.... Read More about ‘O, what a sympathy of woe is this' : passionate sympathy in Titus Andronicus.