cover image The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets [With CD]

The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets [With CD]

Helen Hennessy Vendler. Belknap Press, $45 (672pp) ISBN 978-0-674-63711-5

Cloaked in biographical mystery, Shakespeare's sonnets have tended to inspire historical detective work (most often into the identity of the Dark Lady, the Rival Poet) rather than literary criticism. When recent critics have attempted close readings of the 154 sonnets, the best have often thrown up their hands at the poems' rich ambiguities and the controversies these have sparked. Not Vendler. With admirable self-reliance and hardly a glance at the main stream of historical and gender-studies criticism, the famed Harvard professor reads the poems pragmatically, as ""verbal contraptions,"" explaining how and why they work the way they do. The result is not just a few brilliant perceptions about, say, Shakespeare's use of cliches or chiasmus (although those are here), but the best teachers' edition on the market. Vendler's preface, and the essays that accompany each sonnet (reproduced in 1609 facsimile as well as a modernized version), will make a nearly perfect introduction for college students--or for anyone else who wants to learn how to read the poems for their skill and originality. To this end, Vendler has recorded her own recitations of several important sonnets and included that CD with the book: as every teacher should soon be convinced, these poems must be memorized and spoken if they are truly to be read. CD not heard by PW. (Nov.)