SEDERI Yearbook

ISSN: 1135-7789

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Spanish and Portuguese Society for English

Renaissance Studies

España

PRIETO-PABLOS, Juan Antonio

Cerezo, Marta. 2005: Critical Approaches to Shakespeare. Shakespeare for All Time. Madrid:

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

SEDERI Yearbook, núm. 15, 2005, pp. 145-150

Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies

Valladolid, España

Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=333527601009

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Cerezo, Marta. 2005:

Crltical Appros ches lo Shakespeare:Shakespeare lor All Time.

Madrid: Universidad Nacio nal de Educación a Distancia

Juan Anloni o PRIETo-PABLOS

UHil'f!rsity ofSenille

It sho uld be noted , before proceeding any further, that this book isprimari lv meant lo be a textbook or " Unidad Didá ctica" for theUNED (Universid ad Naci ona l de Educación a Distancia), and that itis accord ingly inlended lo be of use primarily for UNED sludentsand teachers . It is in fact the equ iva len t of a Open Universitytextbo ok and it is suggesled exp licitly by the au thor tha t readerssho uld consider it as com plemen ta ry in forma tion for ano ther UNE Dpublicati on, Litem iura il/gleso llflsto el siglo XVII. However, MariaCerezo's Crilico} Approache» lo S}lflkespeore may very we ll pTOve mosluseful per se, for most teachers and undergraduate s tudents whoma y need to con front Shakespeare's w orks and Sha kes peareancr iticism for the first time,

This book complies wi th most of the formal requirem ents tha tou ght to be expected in a s tuden t's textbook; lo w it :- lt includes guidelines for s tuden ts, w ith clea r d eclarations ofobjectives, suggestions for self-assessment and exercises for eachsection, and abundani b íblíographícal Iísts for further reading on thelopics discu ssed .- Critica) ideas and concepts are presented with extreme simplicityan d clarity, in a sty le that will make them accessíble andeomprehensible to the book's intended readers: yet th e discuss ion isprogressi vely brought lo depths wh ich will also make reading thebook a profitable experience for students with a more thanelementary acquain tance w ith Sha kespearea n studies .- The topi cs d iscussed are relevan t fOI él particu la r course taught althe UNE D, but a lso, I am sure, for o ther courses taught in rn ostuniversities both in Spain and abroad . Moreover, these lopies coveraspects of Shakespearean criticism which s lu den ls ma y need loknow about but teachers fail to d iscuss in deta ll due to all-too­fami liar time restrictions .

- Finally, the depth an d w íd th of the lopics d iscussed d enote theauthor's oulsland ing famílíaríty with the hislory of Sha kespeareancriticism . This i50 particularl v noticeable wi th regards lo accuracy andproprie ty (I ha ve detected no serious blunders, and that is qui te anach ie vem en t in such a book as this); an d an essen tia1 reqnisite lofulfil the prm cíples of simplícíty and claritv outlined aboye.

If there is so me th íng lo objec t lo thís book, il wo uld benecessary to seek, not mnong its qu alitati ve aspects bu t anlong itsquantitative. I arn prel ty sure that s luden ls wi ll find irs 337 pages loomany, perhaps even too heavv for speedy digestion. To moreadvanced sch ola rs, on the othe r hand, and in w hat is only anapparenl con trad iction, sorne of the topics are presented loo briefly,and may leave them hungering for more, Brevity and extens i ón arein facl the result of incorporating a very wide ran ge of lopics; andinevi tably sorne of these are dealt w ith in less space than they mightdeserve . As a ma lle r of fact, this Ullidnrl Did úcticacould be defined asbein g two books in one, if nol th ree in one; il is di vid ed in to lwoParts, an d it is no l di fficult lo imagine their existence as two separa lebooks, each nicely fulfilli ng ils specífic objec tives independently. 11musl be acknow ledged that the in forma tion provid ed in each Parldoes indeed work as él com p lemen t to the other, and thu s crea tes akind of mutual dependence that justi fies the book's curren t formal;bul in the end the densi tv of all that in formation makes it a book forsludenls lo read slowly a-;"d for leachers lo use pati ently.

Parl One, "Shakespearean Crit ical History," occupies pa ges 15to 176, and o ffers a detail ed panoraln a of the history o f cri ticism onShakespeare from Shakespeare 's own time to our day. 11 is di videdinlo two Units, the firsl one (21-60) covering the critical h islory from[onson lo Tillyard , the second (61-116) focusing on the critica!approaches that emerged in the second half of the twentieth cen tury.The pa ttern followed in the organiza tion o f bo th units is the sain e:both slarl with an introduct ion wh ích outlines the aims andobjectives: continue with él number of sections describing él specificcritica1 approach and a selec tion of critica1 p<-'1 sSc-l ges from theauthors ' wo rks illustrat ing that spec ific approach; and conc lude withel list o f recommended essays an d websites, él table of key te rms anda number of "self-assessmen t questions." The weighl of each unitfalls, understandabl v, on the cri tical sections, In Un it 1 , thedescription is more heavily focu sed on the con lribu lion of specificcritics . Each cri tic is re presen ted by a l least one critica] excerp t,

which is in turn introduced by means of a se t of "guidelines forcom prehension." These excerpls are very brief, perhaps excessive lyso . Most of them occupy no OlOTe than one paragraph, and in suchshorl space there is hardly any oppo rtunity lo illustra te a cri tic'sview on a speciñc topie. In th is , th e hook lll ilY disappoint readerswho would like lo see the crines ' opinions more fully represented,On the o ther hand, one may also hope that the exce rpls ma yencourage those readers lo seek the full texts elsew here.

The s itua tion begins lo change somewh a t in the second part,w here we find longer and increasingly m ore elabora te sections onea rly twentieth cen tury cri tics, though th e critica] passages continuelo be as short. And il will be rem arkablv more noticeabl e in Unit 2 .

As the descriplion advances in time low~rds íhe present , so the focuscentres on the trends or schools ra ther than on spec ific critics, thedescription o f critica} a pp roac hes progressively increases its depthand de tail , an d thus their length in creases too, to the ex tent that th esection on Cender Stud ies in Un ir 2 occu p ies over 60 pages, while[onson 's and Drydcn 's Nco-classical criticism is d ispatchcd in a fivc­pa ge sec lion in Unil 1.

lt is unders tandab le that twen tieth-century criticism should begiven pre-erninence, if only because many of its premi ses andopinions continue lo be valuabl e and applicable in our analyses loShakespeare's wo rk. Moreover, Maria Cerezo has managed lo placecritics logelher in their asc rip tion lo both spec ific critical schools andpa rticular topics of interest, So, for example, in the second ha lf ofUnit I , she succeeds in connec ting the work of Wilson Knigh t,Spurgeon and C1emen lhrough their inleresl in Sha kespeare 's use ofimagery; and then she offers a ra ther coherent panorama o f the workdeveloped in the firsl half of the twen tieth cen tury by such di sparatecritics as Gra n ville- Barke r a nd Tillyard. The author's task in Unit 2 íssomewha t facilita ted by the existence of recogni zable cri tica l schoolslo which critics cou ld be asc ribed, vet al the same lime il is maderather more com plex by Ihe need to refer nol only lo Sha kes pea reancr itics but a lso to those who most significantly contributed to theelnergence of those schools . So, th is Unit 2 sta r ts w ith Section 2 . 1, ons truc tu ra list criticism which includ es a brief description ofSaussure's work be fore it proceeds to presenling the work done bythe "quasi-stru cturalists" (68) Wilson Knighl and L'C. Knight. 111en ,Section 2 .2 . discusses post-structuralism and deconstructi vism asrepresented by Derrida in its general outline and by Ca therine Belsey

' 47

within Shakespearean cri ticism : and section 2 .), on New Historicismand Cultura l Materialism , fealures Greenblatt, Dollímore, Sinfield,Holdemess and Montrose . By far the m ost com p lex panoranla iscovered under Section 2.4, as it is su bd ivided into a n umber of sub­sections and s ub-sub -sections. lts general ritle is "Cender Stud ies,"and m uch of its space is dedicated lo the d escription of the variouswaves of con tempora ry feminism and to va rious feminis t critics(2+ 1), from Showa lter lo Dusinberre , from Lenz, Creen and Neely'sTlte Vl' OIllOIl 'S Porl lo jardine and Woodbridge; .1 11 of il blend ed wi threferences to Cixo us, lrigaray or Kri ste va - and followed by asubsec tion on Feminism and Psychoanalysis (2.4.1.3; 125-144) inwhich the basic principIes of Freudian and Locanian theories aresununed up and i11uslraled with yel further sub-sec lions on TitusA ndronicus a nd Killg Lear. After such a plethora of in formation, onemay apprecia te the relative brevi ty and straightforwardness o f sub­section 2.4.2, on Cay Stud ies, with Bray, Cold berg, Smith and Orgelas em inen t representatives: and of Sec tion 2.5, on PostcolonialStudics, pcrhaps loo scanlily i11ust raled in ils general approach by alonely Ed wa rd Said bu l we11 represen ted within the field ofSha kespea re Sludies by Loomba and Orkin.

After these very long and dense Unils, one m usl still wonder ifthe Iist of critics chosen by Maria Cerezo is the appropriate one. Theanswer lo the question is that, considering that Sha kespea re is theau thor mosl wrillen about in the hislo ry of English literature, manycrities and sorne critical approaches are, íne vítably, missing in thelisl. On the other hand, it ough t lo be acknowledged that thoseinc1uded deser ve their p lace on the pages of Crilico/ Approaches loS//Okespeore. But I would have appreciated sorne menli on ofcontributions mad e by Spa nish critics. Our national Shakespearean shave already o ffered numerous and h ígh ly-valuable ideas in avariety of research fields, and therefore a book of this kind couldha ve eas ily acknowledged the exislence of Spa nish scholars whosework has added to the richness and variety of Sha kespeareancriticismo

Part 2 bears the rat her misleading title "The ShakespeareanSlage: Hmnlet and Mocbellt." It is indeed a sludy of these lwo plays,done in the same style and with the sarne dependence on criticaIapproaches as in Parl 1; bul it has very little on the s laging of theplays. The d iscussion on Htnntet and Mocbellt fo11ows a similarpall em , once again: Uni l 3 is for Hamlct, Uni t 4 for Mocbetlt; and then

each Unil is di vided into three sec tions, the first describing thehistorical and literarv context of the production of text and story, thesecond reviewing so me of the main critical approaches lo each play,and the third focused on specific d ramatic situa tions , under theequallv mislea ding tille of "Te xtual Ana lvs is ." Strictly speaking, innone of these sections is there hardly any thing resembling theapproach adop ted by crilies w ithin the field s of Thea lre Stud ies orTexlual Stud ies; nor is it the author's intent lo do so, lo be fair. So thernatter should perha ps be dealt w ith as an infelicitous choice of ve'Yambiva len t terms .

As regards the Unit on Hnm/et , it 111U 5 t be noticed once againthe admirable cloritv with which Marta Cerezo addresses the rathercumbe rsome mall e'; of dates , early ed ilio ns and sources of the play.Things gradually acquire more complexity, but no less clarity, inSection 2 , "Critica} Approaches to Hamle t." Here the au thor revisitssorne of th e topies and critica ] opinions presented in Part 1 , but thistime rea rranges them according to specific topies. So, she s tar ts withthe qucstion of mclancholy and its influence in Harnl ct 'scharac teriza lion, whieh allows her to pla ce together the opinionsheld by Johnson, Bradley, Eliot or Wilson Knighl. Then she moves onto d iscuss the political in terpretations o f th e play v ía Belsey andTennenhouse, and ad ds SOIne comments on the tapie o f re\'enge .Finally, she focuses on issues debated from the poin l of view ofFeminist Stud ies, with references lo Showalte r 's work on Ophelia ­bu t remarkably, and surprisingly, w ilh hardly any substanlialcornments on interpretati ons o f the role played by Gertrude. Sec tion3 seems to offer a more personal approach lo spec ific moti fs andsituations; or, a t any rate, the references to other critics' opinionscease to appea r explicitly. Thu s, specific subsections are reserved forthe tapie of meta thealricali ty, for the role played by the ghosl ofHarnlet 's father, for another discussion of the relationship betw eenHamlet and Ophelia, and for a description of " Ham let's World " orworld -view . Them atical ly, there is not much int erna] coherence inthis section; but, pla ced together, all these tapies ma y help studentsge l a good picture of what Hamlet offers lo its readers.

With the Unit on Mncbetli, the silua lion differs only sligh tly. InSection 1, Marta Cerezo includes aIso a sub-section in which shefocuses on the possible interests (mostlv, of a polítical nature) thatMacbeth 's s tory mi gh t ha ve had for Sha kespeare 's early­seven teen th -cen tury con tem pora ries . And in Sections 2 and J me

149

inclines so mewha t loo s leeply towards considerations rega rdingimagery . So, Brad ley and, above all, Wilson Knight are natura llvbro ught in; but then a lso Janel Adebnan's feminisl approach and5in field 's po lilical interpre tation of the play are regarded inassocia tion wi th , and lo el cer ta in extert t a re aubord ina ted to ,Shakespea re 's use of imagery. Thi s is even more noti ceable in SectionJ, which the au thor explícitly remarks is "devoted lo the centralthemes and images" in the play (296), and where the ma tter ofirnagery is further expanded, this lime evincing a higher degree ofdependen ce on wha t o ther cri tics (mostly Clean th Brooks; moremarginal ly, 5purgeon, Braunmuller and Bnllongh) ha ve said, AII inall, as the emphasis falls so heavily on a stylist íc fealure and nol somuch on the dramatic situations, my personal imp ression is that thedi scussion in this Unit is compara tively less sa tisfactory than that inUnil J , though by no rneans unsuitable for sludenls wi lling lo tacklethe com ple xities of M ncbrtll.

After reading the book, the read er is left wi th the feeling thatlime has bccn wcll and profilably spen!. lt is tru c tha t thcrc is lit tlcnew in il for specialised scholars, as il is mostly a cornpilation ofm ainstrearn critica} opinions with which ene is (or should be) quitefamiliar; but as most speeialis ts are a lso acad emics in sea rch forsuitable bibliographical sources lo offer lo their s tuden ts, they willfind that Maria Cerezo's Critical Approaches to Slmkesl"nre:S/mkesl"nre [or All Time is a \'e ry we lcome addil ion lo thei r stud ents'recommended readi ng lisl .