Current norms of literary criticism tend to ignore ways in which literary experiences relate to life experience, and some ways in which literary experiences can be intensified and deepened. In this vibrant and controversial book, David Fuller seeks to recover the life in Shakespeare's sonnets, arguing that feeling and emotion, often ignored in criticism, should be central. He offers two ways of attempting this - first engaging with the poems through kinds of feeling fundamental to the young man sequence as presented in other kinds of writing and art - philosophy (Plato), poetry and visual art (Michelangelo), fiction (Mann), music (Britten), and film (Jarman). He then discusses reading the poems aloud, showing that dwelling in the words without translating them into other terms brings out their beauty and expressivity, and leads to fuller understanding of their form, structure, and meaning.

Author Biography

David Fuller is Emeritus Professor of English in the University of Durham, UK. From 2002 to 2007 he was the University's Orator. He trained as a musicologist, and has written on a range of literary topics from Medieval to Modern. He is the author of Blake's Heroic Argument (1988), James Joyce's 'Ulysses' (1992), Signs of Grace (with David Brown, 1995). He has edited Tamburlaine the Great (1998) for the Clarendon Press complete works of Marlowe, co-edited (with Patricia Waugh) The Arts and Sciences of Criticism (OUP, 1999), and edited Blake: Selected Poetry and Prose (Longman, 2000, 2008).