Names as Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies [Hardback] by Grant W. Smith

Prof. Grant Smith is a well-known researcher with an excellent reputation in the onomastic world. For several decades he has had an intense activity, quantified by publications in scientific journals, proceedings, participation in congresses and conferences in America, Europe, Israel, and administrative functions in top organizations such as ANS and ICOS.

In "Names as Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies", the author proposes a collection of analytical essays on Shakespeare’s fourteen comedies plus an introduction. This book offers a novel perspective on the names of characters in Shakespeare's comedies. From the author's perspective, literature is not propaganda, with arguments for ideas and policies, but an expression of basic human emotions.

With extensive experience in literary onomastics, onomastic theory, and semiotics, Professor Grant W. Smith crowns with this volume his longstanding interest in anthroponymic analysis and Shakespeare’s plays.

Dr Oliviu Felecan

Technical University Of Cluj-Napoca

North University Center Of Baia Mare, Romania

The doyen of onomastics undertakes the attempt to explain Shakespeare's names' poetic effects and analogical meanings. He succeeds by this impressive work to demonstrate the symbolic meaning of anthroponyms and proper names in general that transcends by far their formal function of designation. Besides his systematic and analytical approach towards the use and role of names in literature, he also provides a colorful insight into how a poetry champion played with name symbolism. Thus, the book covers a wide range from laying a theoretical basis for literary onomastics to better understand a great poet and his works. Onomasticians, as well as everybody interested in exploring the wealth of literature, will enormously benefit from it.

Dr Peter Jordan

Austrian Academy of Sciences, Co-chair, Joint ICA/IGU Commission on Toponymy

Grant W. Smith’s Names and Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies brings service to semiotics, literary studies, literary onomastics, as a humanistic field, and to the study of onomastics in national literatures, by force of example. It also indelibly marks the traductological aspects concerning Shakespeare’s works, and mediates and gives a sturdy foundation to various (theatrical, intimate) experiences that the public may have with the comedies of William Shakespeare.

[Extract from book review appearing at 'Onoma' (Journal of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences), 57 (2022), pp. 321–325. Reviewer: Adina Chirilă, West University of Timișoara, Romania]

Through a wide semiotic lens, Smith identifies onomastic patterns and practices both within these fourteen individual plays and across the Bard’s comedic oeuvre. Further, Smith narrows his focus to examine the associative and lexical properties of individual names in a scrupulous fashion, play by play. His extensive, organized, and informative study will benefit Shakespearean scholars and will, no doubt, be of interest to more general names enthusiasts. Because each play receives its own chapter in “Names as Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies,” readers have several options as they maneuver through Smith’s study.

[Extract from book review appearing at 'Names, Vol. 70, Nº 2, June 2022, pp. 54-56. Reviewer: Dorothy Dodge Robbins, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Lousiana]

Infine, la cura che trasuda dai particolari più piccoli è indicativa della ricercatezza con cui Smith dipinge il variegato mondo onomastico delle commedie di Shakespeare espiega la reputazione che si è guadagnato nel firmamento internazionale dell’onomastica letteraria. Tuttavia, il pregio di questo volume sta nel fatto che, oltre ad offrire una ricerca ampia e articolata dei nomi come metafore nelle commedie di Shakespeare, propone una cornice teorica e modelli analitici che possono essere applicati in generale nel campo dell’onomastica letteraria offrendo un contributo vivace al dibattito sul potenziale ‘significato’ dei nomi.

[Extract from book review (ITALIAN) appearing at the journal RION (Rivista Italiana di Onomastica), XXVIII (2022), 2. Reviewer: Luisa Caiazzo (Potenza, Italy)]