No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Reviewed by Zeyuan Hu One thousand readers make one thousand Hamlets. Shakespeare has been read and interpreted through different schools of criticism and theories since his own time. There had been Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, and Victorian criticism of Shakespeare before the 20 th century. Prior to the 1970s, the intrinsic criticisms of literature had been dominating the western literary criticism. Russian Formalism, New Criticism, Structuralism, etc., emphasized the autonomy of literary texts and viewed the texts as the focus of their literary analysis. In the 1980s, some critics began to realize the defects of intrinsic criticisms. A literary work is deeply rooted in its political, social and cultural contexts. The so-called "self-sufficient literary work" doesn't exist at all. Since 1979, the intrinsic rhetorical studies of literature have been replaced by the extrinsic studies of literature. Around the 1980s, Western Marxism, Feminism and New Historicism became the most influential theories in literary criticisms. As one of the most influential schools of literary criticisms, Cultural Materialism emerged in England in close association with Marxism and New Historicism. Cultural Materialist Shakespeare criticism, Marxist Shakespeare criticism and New-Historical Shakespeare criticism are classified as Materialist Shakespeare criticisms as a whole.