The nature of autobiography: The sonnet of the self. An annotated critical edition of "Autobiography of Shakespeare from his Thirty-fourth to his Thirty-ninth year, derived from his Sonnets--Together with the Sonnets themselves arranged and elucidated" by David Masson, with an analysis and discussion of the sonnet as a literary form and autobiography as a literary genre.
Item
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Title
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The nature of autobiography: The sonnet of the self. An annotated critical edition of "Autobiography of Shakespeare from his Thirty-fourth to his Thirty-ninth year, derived from his Sonnets--Together with the Sonnets themselves arranged and elucidated" by David Masson, with an analysis and discussion of the sonnet as a literary form and autobiography as a literary genre.
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Identifier
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AAI9315442
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identifier
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9315442
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Creator
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Abramowitz, Rhoda (Ronni) Sue.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Felicia Bonaparte
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Date
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1993
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English
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Abstract
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In 1846, David Masson started his search for the true nature of Shakespeare's character. His studies spanned a fifty-year period and while he pursued this investigation through the entire Shakespearean canon, Masson ultimately concluded that if the modern world could ever know Shakespeare personally, the insight must come from Shakespeare's sonnets. This is the focus of Masson's manuscript, Autobiography of Shakespeare from His Thirty-fourth to his Thirty-ninth year, derived from his Sonnets--Together with the Sonnets themselves arranged and elucidated, which I consider in this dissertation. My own purposes, however, for considering Masson's text, are, although I think as important, quite different. The central purpose of this dissertation is, first, to prove that by using Masson's Autobiography of Shakespeare as a clue to the Victorian frame of mind, a sharper picture will emerge of Masson as an important and overlooked literary and social critic, whose intuitive knowledge of nineteenth-century aesthetics and societal issues deserves closer scrutiny for what it says about both Shakespearean and Victorian thought. My second purpose is to show that Masson's manuscript can lead to a profound understanding of the sonnet as a powerful literary form whose reemergence and revaluation in the nineteenth century imposed entelechical precepts on autobiography as a literary genre. Included in my edition of Masson's Autobiography of Shakespeare will be the first comprehensive alphabetical listing of Masson's wide-ranging published works. Finally, I shall offer here an annotated critical edition of David Masson's unpublished manuscript, Autobiography of Shakespeare.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
