 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Isaac Asimov |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Rafael Palacios |
| Language | English |
| Subject | William Shakespeare |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | 1970 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 843 |
| ISBN | 978-0-517-26825-4 |
| OCLC | 4498736 |
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970) by Isaac Asimov is a two-volume guide to the works of the celebrated English writer William Shakespeare. The numerous maps were drafted by the artist Rafael Palacios.
The work gives a short guide to every Shakespeare play, as well as two epic poems. Asimov organizes the plays not in the usual way – as tragedies, comedies, and histories – but regionally, as follows:
The last two categories are treated broadly; "Italian" applies to neighbouring countries, and both Hamlet and Macbeth are listed with "The English Plays". Asimov gives a detailed justification for doing this.
Within each category, the plays are arranged according to internal (historical) chronology, making allowance for the several not based on actual events. Asimov notes how much is real history, and describes who the historical people were, where applicable. He traces those characters who appear in more than one play, and provides maps to explain key geographical elements.
It being "the most straightforwardly mythological" and tracing "farthest backward (if only dimly so) in history," Asimov includes in his regional categorisation, beginning with the "Greek", Shakespeare’s first narrative poem, Venus and Adonis (1593). He also includes Shakespeare’s second narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece (1594), amongst the "Roman", it dealing with "the earliest event, the legendary fall of the Roman monarchy in 509 B.C.". More precise settings are indicated in superscript and parentheses.
Greek | Roman | Italian
| English
|
Asimov's approach is not popular with some readers' prejudices:
Fans of Asimov's science-fiction generally have little taste for door-stopper books such as Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare or The Shaping of England, and specialists are never happy to see clever outsiders make hay in their fields.
— Peter Temes [1]
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970), ISBN 978-0-517-26825-4. Gramercy Books.
Nearly 800 pages long plus an index, the work was originally published in two volumes; Greek, Roman and Italian in the first and 'The English Plays' in the second.
Asimov dedicated the work to his late father, Judah Asimov.
Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as popular science and other non-fiction.
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey from Troy to Ithaca, via Africa and southern Europe, lasted for ten additional years during which time he encountered many perils and all of his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, sometimes shortened to Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. The six volumes cover, from 98 to 1590, the peak of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and its emergence as the Roman state religion, the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the rise of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane and the fall of Byzantium, as well as discussions on the ruins of Ancient Rome.
Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the history of England, they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus—are also based on historical figures, but because their sources were foreign and ancient, they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories. Shakespeare's romances were written late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or comedy. They share some elements of tragedy, insofar as they feature a high-status central character, but they end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Almost three centuries after Shakespeare's death, the scholar F. S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play," for plays that do not fit neatly into a single classification because of their subject matter, setting, or ending. Scholars continue to disagree on how to categorize some Shakespearean plays.
The Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his magnum opus. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar in a mythico-historical framework comprising over 250 myths, 15 books, and 11,995 lines.
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This is a bibliography of the books written or edited by Isaac Asimov, arranged alphabetically. Asimov was a prolific author, and he engaged in many collaborations with other authors. This list may not yet be complete. The total number of books listed here is over 500. Asimov died in 1992 at age 72; a small number of his books were published posthumously.
This is a list of short stories by American writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov is principally known for his science fiction, but he also wrote mystery and fantasy stories.
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Asimov's Guide to the Bible is a work by Isaac Asimov that was first published in two volumes in 1968 and 1969, covering the Old Testament and the New Testament, respectively. He combined them into a single 1296-page volume in 1981. They included maps by the artist Rafael Palacios.
The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World is a large-format English language atlas of ancient Europe, Asia, and North Africa, edited by Richard J. A. Talbert. The time period depicted is roughly from archaic Greek civilization through Late Antiquity. The atlas was published by Princeton University Press in 2000. The book was the winner of the 2000 Association of American Publishers Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Multivolume Reference Work in the Humanities.
A re'em, also reëm, is an animal mentioned nine times in the Hebrew Bible. It has been translated as "unicorn" in the Latin Vulgate, King James Version, and in some Christian Bible translations as "oryx", "wild ox", "wild bull", "buffalo" or "rhinoceros". Natan Slifkin has argued that the re'em was an aurochs, as has Isaac Asimov before him.
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science is a general guide to the sciences by the American writer and scientist Isaac Asimov. It was first published in 1960 by Basic Books. Revised versions were published as The New Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Asimov's Guide to Science (1972), and Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984).
This is a bibliography of books, plays, films, and libretti written, edited, or translated by the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden (1907–1973). See the main entry for a list of biographical and critical studies and external links. Dates are dates of publication of performance, not of composition.
In a writing career spanning 53 years (1939–1992), science fiction and popular science author Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) wrote and published 40 novels, 383 short stories, over 280 non-fiction books, and edited about 147 others.
"Rule 18" is a 1938 science fiction novelette by American writer Clifford D. Simak, credited as launching Simak's career and helping inspire the writing style of Isaac Asimov. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2014.
Isaac Asimov wrote three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) were a two-volume work, covering his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), published after his death, was not a sequel but a new work which covered his whole life. This third book won a Hugo Award.
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Isaac Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books, Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing.
Thomas O’Conor Sloane III was an American editor, professor, etymologist and career military officer.
