Shakespeare's Dialectic of Hope

Shakespeare's Dialectic of Hope
Author: Hugh Grady
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2022-05-19
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1009098098

Shakespeare was fascinated by power throughout his career but also understood its dangers and limits. Utopian visions were his solution.

Shakespeare Studies

Shakespeare Studies
Author: James R. Siemon
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2024-03-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1683933915

Shakespeare Studies is an annual peer-reviewed volume featuring the work of performance scholars, literary critics and cultural historians. The journal focuses primarily on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, but embraces theoretical and historical studies of socio-political, intellectual and artistic contexts that extend well beyond the early modern English theatrical milieu. In addition to articles, Shakespeare Studies offers opportunities for extended intellectual exchange through its thematically-focused forums, and includes substantial reviews. An international Editorial Board maintains the quality of each volume so that Shakespeare Studies may serve as a reliable resource for all students of Shakespeare and the early modern period – for research scholars and also for teachers, actors and directors. Volume 51 includes a Forum on the work of Michael D Bristol, with contributions from J. F. Bernard, Gail Kern Paster, James Siemon, Jill Ingram, Unhae Park Langis and Julia Reinhard Lupton, Anna Lewton-Brain and Brooke Harvey, Nicholas Utzig, and Paul Yachnin. Volume 51 includes articles from the Next Generation Plenary of the Shakespeare Association of America and essays by Laurence Senelick ("A Gift to Anti-Semites: Shylock on the Pre-Revolutionary Russian Stage"), Christopher D'Addario ("Metatheater and the Urban Everyday in Ben Jonson's Epicoene and The Alchemist"), and Denise A. Walen ("Elbowing Katherine of Valois"). Book reviews consider eleven important publications on liberty of speech and female voice; theaters of catastrophe; adaptations of Macbeth; staging touch in Shakespeare's England; the criticism of Hugh Grady; Shakespeare and World War II film; Shakespeare and digital pedagogy; Shakespeare and forgetting; Shakespeare and disability studies, and Shakespeare's private life.

Shakespeare in French Theory

Shakespeare in French Theory
Author: Richard Wilson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2014-02-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317724003

At a time when the relevance of literary theory itself is frequently being questioned, Richard Wilson makes a compelling case for French Theory in Shakespeare Studies. Written in two parts, the first half looks at how French theorists such as Bourdieu, Cixous, Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault were themselves shaped by reading Shakespeare; while the second part applies their theories to the plays, highlighting the importance of both for current debates about borders, terrorism, toleration and a multi-cultural Europe. Contrasting French and Anglo-Saxon attitudes, Wilson shows how in France, Shakespeare has been seen not as a man for the monarchy, but a man of the mob. French Theory thus helps us understand why Shakepeare’s plays swing between violence and hope. Highlighting the recent religious turn in theory, Wilson encourages a reading of plays like Hamlet, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelth Night as models for a future peace. Examining both the violent history and promising future of the plays, Shakespeare in French Theory is a timely reminder of the relevance of Shakespeare and the lasting value of French thinking for the democracy to come.

Acts of Hope

Acts of Hope
Author: James Boyd White
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 1995-08-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 022605635X

To which institutions or social practices should we grant authority? When should we instead assert our own sense of what is right or good or necessary? In this book, James Boyd White shows how texts by some of our most important thinkers and writers—including Plato, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Mandela, and Lincoln—answer these questions, not in the abstract, but in the way they wrestle with the claims of the world and self in particular historical and cultural contexts. As they define afresh the institutions or practices for which they claim (or resist) authority, they create authorities of their own, in the very modes of thought and expression they employ. They imagine their world anew and transform the languages that give it meaning. In so doing, White maintains, these works teach us about how to read and judge claims of authority made by others upon us; how to decide to which institutions and practices we should grant authority; and how to create authorities of our own through our thoughts and arguments. Elegant and accessible, this book will appeal to anyone wanting to better understand one of the primary processes of our social and political lives.

Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare

Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare
Author: John A. Murley
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2006-08-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0739158783

Political science is becoming ever more reliant on abstract statistical models and almost divorced from human judgment, hope, and idealism. William Shakespeare offers the political scientist an antidote to this methodological alienation, this self-imposed exile from the political concerns of citizens and politicians. Shakespeare, the most quoted author in the English-speaking world, presents his characters as rulers, citizens, and statesmen of the most famous regimes, governed by their respective laws and shaped by their respective political and social institutions. The actions, deliberations, mistakes, and successes of his characters reveal the limitations and strengths of their regimes, whether they be Athens, Rome, or England. The contributors to this volume, esteemed scholars of political science, show us that Shakespeare's poetic imagination displays the very essence of politics and inspires valuable reflection on the fundamental questions of statesmanship and political leadership. Perspectives on Shakespeare's Politics explores such themes as classical republicanism and liberty, the rule of law and morality, the nature and limits of statesmanship, and the character of democracy.

Shakespeare's Neighbors

Shakespeare's Neighbors
Author: Rocco Coronato
Publisher:
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2001
Genre: Drama
ISBN:

Shakespeare's Neighbors focuses on what lay next door to Shakespeare- the theoretical context that, while partially lost on us, was quite likely to inform the perception that Shakespeare's contemporaries (his 'neighbors') had of his works. In this series of alternative readings, the primacy of the literary text is set against the backdrop of unexpected or largely ignored theories whose enormous diffusion renders them inescapable terms of comparison. Rocco Coronato advocates the likely as a viable backdrop to literary analysis. The inference has it that the presence of such widely disseminated theories may allow for the study of the literary works through their own codes and imagery, without implying a rigidly ideological transmission between social and literary domains. While written with literary criticism in mind, Coronato manages to avoid convoluted jargon, striving in the process to translate the terms of otherwise esoteric discourses into a generally accessible language form, for the benefit of a non-specialist audience as well.

From Shakespeare to Existentialism

From Shakespeare to Existentialism
Author: Walter A. Kaufmann
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 1980-07-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780691013671

A companion volume to his Critique of Religion and Philosophy, this book offers Walter Kaufmann's critical interpretations of some of the great minds in Western philosophy, religion, and literature.