Shakespeare and Comics: Negotiating Cultural Value [Hardcover]

From their inception, 'low culture' comics have intersected with the 'high culture' of Shakespeare. This is the first book-length collection dedicated entirely to the exploration of this collision.

Its chapters illuminate the ways in which different texts, time periods, politics, authors, media, approaches and forms interact. Ranging from Classic Comics to Marvel, fromtebeoto manga, from independent to mainstream comics, texts explored includeY: The Last Man,Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'(The Sandman #19), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I Am Alfonso Jones, Marvel 1602, Doom 2099,and manga adaptations ofThe TempestandMacbeth,among many others.

As comic books and their big-screen progeny dominate mainstream popular culture, the association of Shakespeare with comics offers creators and critics tools with which to interrogate the place of Shakespeare within the English and global literary and cultural traditions.Shakespeare and Comicsargues that, at a moment when the reassessment and reimagining of literary canons has become more urgent than ever, thinking about Shakespeare through the lens of comics invites us to imagine a literary and cultural landscape in which so-called 'great works' exist alongside and in equal conversation with marginalized writers, topics and forms.

Jim Caseyis an independent scholar based in the USA.

Brandon Christopheris Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg, Canada.

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction: What's Shakespeare to Comics, or Comics to Shakespeare?
Jim Casey (Independent scholar, USA) and Brandon Christopher (University of Winnipeg, Canada)

Part One: Timeless and Timely
1. Delineating Comics:Shakespeare Illustratedand the Question of Narrative Production,CatherilS7