German Shakespeare Studies at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century

This collection of fifteen essays offers a sample of German Shakespeare studies at the turn of the century. The articles are written by scholars in the old "Bundeslander" and deal with different topics such as culture, memory, and natural sciences in Shakespeare's work, Shakespearean spin-offs as well as with the reception of Venice and Shylock in Germany. The section on the German Shakespeare Society traces another kind of appropriation of Shakespeare in Germany. It discusses the founding of the society in 1864, its situation during the Third Reich, its split in 1963, and its reunification in 1993. This collection of articles (originally written in German) will make available for the first time the significant contributions of German Shakespeare studies to an English-speaking audience. Christa Jansohn is Professor of British Culture and Director of the Centre for British Studies at the University of Bamberg, Germany.