The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton

In pursuit of a powerful, common-sense argument about realism, renowned scholar A. D. Nuttall discusses English eighteenth-century and French neo-classical conceptions of realism, and considers Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and both parts of King Henry IV as a prolonged feat of mimesis, with particular emphasis on Shakespeare’s perception of society and culture as subject to historical change.

The invitation to deliver five lectures at Essex University in November 1988 encouraged me to give some shape to research which might otherwise have been put to one side indefinitely.