illustration of a sword, Roman helmet, and a pair of eyes in abstraction

Coriolanus

by William Shakespeare

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  • Adelman, Janet, "Escaping the Matrix: The Construction of Masculinity in Coriolanus," Shakespeare's Tragedies, edited by Susan Zimmerman, St. Martin's Press, 1998, pp. 23-45. (Offers a psychological analysis of the play's image of a mother who has not nourished her children.)
  • Alvis, John, "Coriolanus and Aristotle's Magnanimous Man Reconsidered," Interpretation 7, No. 3 (September 1978): 4-28. (Claims that Coriolanus typifies the classical ideal of the honorable man.)
  • Barker, Simon A., "Shakespeare's Coriolanus: Texts and Histories," Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts 4 (1987): 109-28. (Explores modern academic and political interpretations of Coriolanus.)
  • Barton, Anne, "Julius Caesar and Coriolanus: Shakespeare's Roman World of Words," Shakespeare's Craft: Eight Lectures, edited by Philip H. Hughfill, Jr., Southern Illinois University Press, 1982, pp. 24-47. (Discusses the manipulative techniques of rhetoric, oratory, and persuasion depicted in Coriolanus and Julius Caesar.)
  • Bathryo, Dennis, "'With Himself at War': Shakespeare's Roman Hero and the Republican Tradition," Shakespeare's Political Pageant: Essays in Literature and Politics, edited by Joseph Alulis and Vickie Sullivan, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996, pp. 237-61. (Demonstrates Shakespeare's skepticism regarding Rome's ability to nurture virtue and maintain its military regime.)
  • Bligh, John, "The Mind of Coriolanus," English Studies in Canada 13, No. 3 (September 1987): 256-70. (Studies the philosophical lessons of aristocratic idealism and amoral realism taught to Coriolanus.)
  • Bliss, Lee, ed., Introduction to The New Cambridge Shakespeare: Coriolanus, by William Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 1-98. (Introduction to Coriolanus focusing on the play's composition, sources, historical contexts, dramatic structure, and stage history.)
  • Bristol, Michael D., "Lenten Butchery: Legitimation Crisis in Coriolanus," Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, edited by Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O'Connor, Methuen, 1987, pp. 207-24. (Contends that Coriolanus depicts the uprising of a "rationally administered violence" thwarted by Coriolanus' death.)
  • Bruce, Yvonne, "The Pathology of Rhetoric in Coriolanus," Upstart Crow 20 (2000): 93-115. (Challenges critics who contend that words and their meanings are disjoined in Coriolanus.)
  • Brustein, Robert, Review of Coriolanus, The New Republic 200, no. 1 (2 January 1989): 26-28. (Assesses the “radical” production of Coriolanus directed by Steven Berkoff.)
  • Bulman, James C., "Coriolanus and the Matter of Troy," Mirror Up to Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of G. R. Hibbard, edited by J. C. Gray, University of Toronto Press, 1984, pp. 242-60. (Examines the allusion to the Trojan War to explore Shakespeare's adaptation of heroic tradition.)
  • Cantor, Paul A., "Part One: Coriolanus," Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire, Cornell University Press, 1976, pp. 55-126. (Probes Coriolanus for insight into the historical facts of Roman society during the late republican period.)
  • Carducci, Jane, "Shakespeare's Coriolanus: 'Could I find out / The woman's part in me,'" Literature and Psychology 33, No. 2 (1987): 11-20. (Argues that Coriolanus provides Shakespeare with the chance to investigate and reject the Roman conception of masculinity.)
  • Cefalu, Paul, "'The End of Absolutism': Shakespeare's Coriolanus and the Consensual Nature of the Early Modern State," Renaissance Forum 4, no. 2 (2000): 34. (Reexamines Coriolanus within the context of recent historical studies on the Tudor-Stuart state.)
  • Colman, E. A. M., "The End of Coriolanus," ELH 34, no. 1 (March 1967): 1-20. (Explores the contention that Coriolanus's demise is disappointing due to lack of self-realization.)
  • Coote, Stephen, "Coriolanus and Seventeenth-Century Politics," Coriolanus, by William Shakespeare, Penguin, 1992, pp. 86-97. (Surveys contemporary events reflected in Coriolanus.)
  • Danson, Lawrence N., "Metonymy and Coriolanus," Philological Quarterly 52, no. 1 (January 1973): 30-42. (Contends that the poetic devices of metonymy and synecdoche serve as significant thematic and structural principles in Coriolanus.)
  • Davidson, Clifford, "Coriolanus: A Study in Political Dislocation," Shakespeare Studies IV (1968): 263-74. (Contends that Coriolanus resists the traditional tragic structure, reflecting Shakespeare's abhorrence of class conflict.)
  • Dillon, Janette, "'Solitariness': Shakespeare and Plutarch," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 78, no. 3 (July 1979): 325-44. (Considers the “antisocial” behavior and attitudes of Shakespeare's tragic protagonists in Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, and Timon of Athens.)
  • du Bois, Page, "The Disturbance of Syntax at the Gates of Rome," Stanford Literature Review 2, no. 2 (fall 1985): 185-208. (Offers a feminist reading of Coriolanus as a critique of matriarchal power embodied in Volumnia.)
  • Hale, David G., "Coriolanus: The Death of a Political Metaphor," Shakespeare Quarterly 22, no. 3 (summer 1971): 197-202. (Analyzes Menenius's metaphor of the body politic, concluding that his simple political analogy is contradicted by later events.)
  • Huffman, Clifford Chalmers, Coriolanus in Context, Bucknell University Press, 1972, 260 p. (Presents a detailed reading of Coriolanus considering Shakespeare's attitudes toward history, politics, and government.)
  • Hutchings, W., "Beast or God: The Coriolanus Controversy," Critical Quarterly 24, no. 2 (summer 1982): 35-50. (Surveys recent critical commentary on Coriolanus, finding that character and politics are complementary elements in the play's structure.)
  • King, Bruce, Coriolanus, Macmillan, 1989, 113 p. (Surveys different approaches to Coriolanus and methodological problems confronting critics.)
  • Lucking, David, "'The price of one fair word': Negotiating Names in Coriolanus," Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature 2, No. 1 (April 1996): 1-22. (Analyzes the significance of Martius's name change following his conquest of Corioles.)
  • MacKenzie, Clayton G., "Girding the Gods: Mythologies of Mars in Coriolanus," Literaria Pragensia: Studies in Literature and Culture 4, No. 8 (1994): 17-38. (Reviews the allusions to the god of war in Coriolanus, discussing the extent to which Coriolanus is associated with Mars.)
  • Miller, Shannon, "Topicality and Subversion in William Shakespeare's Coriolanus," Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 32, No. 2 (Spring 1992): 287-310. (Contends that Coriolanus criticizes the British monarchy and paves the way for rebellion against Carolinian absolutism.)
  • Miola, Robert S., "Coriolanus: Rome and the Self," Shakespeare's Rome, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 164-205. (Claims that Coriolanus depicts Rome as the center of noble activity and petty political squabbling.)
  • Motohashi, Tetsuya, "Body Politic and Political Body in Coriolanus," Forum for Modern Language Studies 30, No. 2 (April 1994): 97-112. (Explores the relationship between Coriolanus and the Roman plebeians to highlight the conflict in Rome.)
  • Murray, Patrick, "Shakespeare's Coriolanus: A Play for Our Time," Studies LXI, No. 243 (Autumn 1972): 253-66. (Explores the continuing relevance of Coriolanus to understanding perennial political issues such as class struggle.)
  • O'Dair, Sharon, "Fobbing Off Disgrace with a Tale: Stories about Voices in Coriolanus," Class, Critics, and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture Wars, University of Michigan Press, 2000, pp. 67-87. (Draws analogies between Coriolanus's antipathy to civil society and the limits of political representation in contemporary American democracy.)
  • Philips, James E., ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Coriolanus: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, 1970, 120 p. (Contains seventeen essays on Coriolanus by various contributors.)
  • Poole, Adrian, Coriolanus, Twayne Publishers, 1988, 140 p. (Examines Coriolanus scene by scene, focusing on character development and commentary on the literary/critical enterprise.)
  • Relihan, Constance C., "Appropriation of the 'Thing of Blood': Absence of Self and the Struggle for Ownership in Coriolanus," Iowa State Journal of Research 62, No. 3 (February 1988): 407-20. (Argues that Coriolanus's sense of self is based on the identity of the military hero shaped by Volumnia.)
  • Reynolds, Bryan, "'What Is the City But the People?': Transversal Performance and Radical Politics in Shakespeare's Coriolanus and Brecht's Coriolan," Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital, edited by Donald Hedrick and Bryan Reynolds, Palgrave, 2000, pp. 107-32. (Compares the historical and sociopolitical contexts of Coriolanus with Brecht's adaptation Coriolan.)
  • Ripley, John, "Coriolanus as Tory Propaganda," Textual and Theatrical Shakespeare: Questions of Evidence, edited by Edward Pechter, University of Iowa Press, 1996, pp. 102-23. (Examines Nahum Tate's adaptation of Coriolanus as an example of Restoration propaganda.)
  • Ripley, John, Coriolanus on Stage in England and America, 1609-1994, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 431 p. (Book-length study of Coriolanus's stage history.)
  • Rosenberg, David A., Review of Coriolanus, Backstage 41, no. 37 (15 September 2000): 64. (Reviews director Jonathan Kent's 2000 staging of Coriolanus at the Almeida Theatre in London.)
  • Schlösser, Anselm, "Reflections upon Shakespeare's Coriolanus," Philologica 6, No. 46 (1963): 11-21. (Interprets Coriolanus as a depiction of class struggle.)
  • Sicherman, Carol M., "Coriolanus: The Failure of Words," ELH 39, no. 2 (June 1972): 189-207. (Contends that words and meanings are hopelessly dissociated in Coriolanus.)
  • Smith, Lacy B., "Coriolanus and the State," Northwestern University Tri-Quarterly II, No. 3 (Spring 1960): 37-38. (Contends that the Roman political arena in Coriolanus represents the political and intellectual culture of Jacobean England.)
  • Sorge, Thomas, "The Failure of Orthodoxy in Coriolanus," Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, edited by Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O'Connor, Methuen, 1987, pp. 225-41. (Characterizes Coriolanus as a comment on the social fabric underlying the political framework.)
  • Stoller, Robert J., "Shakespearean Tragedy: Coriolanus," The Psychoanalytic Quarterly XXXV, No. 2 (1966): 263-74. (Interprets Coriolanus through a psychoanalytic framework, focusing on his relationship with his mother.)
  • Taylor, Michael, "Playing the Man He Is: Role-Playing in Shakespeare's Coriolanus," Ariel 15, No. 1 (January 1984): 19-28. (Maintains that Coriolanus is forced to play a role masking his true nature and feelings.)
  • Tennenhouse, Leonard, "Coriolanus: History and the Crisis of Semantic Order," Comparative Drama 10, No. 4 (Winter 1976-77): 328-46. (Analyzes the dramatic structure of Coriolanus, claiming it ends without the restoration of political order.)
  • Thomas, Vivian, "Sounds, Words, Gestures and Deeds in Coriolanus," Shakespeare's Roman Worlds, Routledge, 1989, pp. 154-219. (Examines the divergences between Shakespeare's characterization of Coriolanus and his deeds and how they are represented in Plutarch and Livy.)
  • Van Oort, Richard, "The Hero Who Wouldn't Be: Coriolanus and the Scene of Tragic Paradox," Anthropoetics 4, no. 2 (fall 1998-winter 1999): 10. (Asserts that Coriolanus resents the fact that his heroism must be publicly acknowledged.)
  • Velz, John W., "Cracking Strong Curbs Asunder: Roman Destiny and the Roman Hero in Coriolanus," English Literary Renaissance 13, No. 1 (Winter 1983): 58-69. (Argues that Coriolanus shows closer affinities to Virgil's philosophy of politics and history.)
  • Vickers, Brian, "Coriolanus and the Demons of Politics," Returning to Shakespeare, Routledge, 1989, pp. 135-93. (Argues that Coriolanus vilifies both the plebeians and the patricians.)
  • Waith, Eugene M., "Coriolanus," The Herculean Hero in Marlowe, Chapman, Shakespeare and Dryden, Chatto & Windus, 1962, pp. 121-43. (Insists that Coriolanus combines a godlike stature with a profound hatred of Rome.)
  • Weckermann, Hans-Júrgen, "Coriolanus: The Failure of the Autonomous Individual," Shakespeare Text Language Criticism: Essays in Honour of Marvin Spevack, edited by Bernhard Fabian, Olms-Weidman, 1987, pp. 334-50. (Argues that Coriolanus's tragic downfall is precipitated by his inflexible unsociability.)
  • Zeeveld, W. Gordon, "'Coriolanus' and Jacobean Politics," Modern Language Review LVII, No. 3 (1962): 321-34. (Claims that Coriolanus is a criticism of the political quarrelling between King James I and the English parliament.)

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The Noble Thing and the Boy of Tears: Coriolanus and the Embarrassments of Identity
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