The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster | Resources

The Duchess of Malfi Further Reading

Bloom, Harold, ed., Elizabethan Dramatists, Modern Critical Views series, Chelsea House, 1986.

This collection of critical essays includes two essays about The Duchess of Malfi as well as essays about Webster's most important contemporaries. In "Tragical Satire in The Duchess of Malfi," Alvin B. Kernan describes Bosola as the ideal, and one of the last, of the Elizabethan satirists. G. Wilson Knight contributes an essay called simply "The Duchess of Malfi," which examines image clusters in the play.

Boklund, Gunnar, "The Duchess of Malfi": Sources, Themes, Characters, Harvard University Press, 1962.

Boklund traces Webster's sources for the story of the Duchess, pointing out the places where Webster deviates from these sources to make the story his own. The characterization of Antonio as humble but honest, for example, is Webster's invention.

Knight, G. Wilson, "The Duchess of Malfi," in Elizabethan Dramatists, edited by Harold Bloom, Modern Critical...
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