Download or read book Rethinking Shakespeare s Political Philosophy written by Alex Schulman and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-21 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What were Shakespeare's politics? As this study demonstrates, contained in Shakespeare's plays is an astonishingly powerful reckoning with the tradition of Western political thought, one whose depth and scope places Shakespeare alongside Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes and others. This book is the first attempt by a political theorist to read Shakespeare within the trajectory of political thought as one of the authors of modernity. From Shakespeare's interpretation of ancient and medieval politics to his wrestling with issues of legitimacy, religious toleration, family conflict, and economic change, Alex Schulman shows how Shakespeare produces a fascinating map of modern politics at its crisis-filled birth. As a result, there are brand new readings of Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Richard II and Henry IV, parts I and II , The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure.
Download or read book Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare written by Paul A. Kottman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-10-26 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul A. Kottman offers a new and compelling understanding of tragedy as seen in four of Shakespeare’s mature plays—As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. The author pushes beyond traditional ways of thinking about tragedy, framing his readings with simple questions that have been missing from scholarship of the past generation: Are we still moved by Shakespeare, and why? Kottman throws into question the inheritability of human relationships by showing how the bonds upon which we depend for meaning and worth can be dissolved. According to Kottman, the lives of Shakespeare's protagonists are conditioned by social bonds—kinship ties, civic relations, economic dependencies, political allegiances—that unravel irreparably. This breakdown means they can neither inherit nor bequeath a livable or desirable form of sociality. Orlando and Rosalind inherit nothing “but growth itself” before becoming refugees in the Forest of Arden; Hamlet is disinherited not only by Claudius’s election but by the sheer vacuity of the activities that remain open to him; Lear’s disinheritance of Cordelia bequeaths a series of events that finally leave the social sphere itself forsaken of heirs and forbearers alike. Firmly rooted in the philosophical tradition of reading Shakespeare, this bold work is the first sustained interpretation of Shakespearean tragedy since Stanley Cavell’s work on skepticism and A. C. Bradley’s century-old Shakespearean Tragedy.
Download or read book Shakespeare s History Plays written by Neema Parvini and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare's History Plays boldly moves criticism of Shakespeare's history plays beyond anti-humanist theoretical approaches. This important intervention in the critical and theoretical discourse of Shakespeare studies summarises, evaluates and ultimately calls time on the mode of criticism that has prevailed in Shakespeare studies over the past thirty years. It heralds a new, more dynamic way of reading Shakespeare as a supremely intelligent and creative political thinker, whose history plays address and illuminate the very questions with which cultural historicists have been so preoccupied since the 1980s. In providing bold and original readings of the first and second tetralogies (Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II and Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2), the book reignites old debates and re-energises recent bids to humanise Shakespeare and to restore agency to the individual in the critical readings of his plays
Download or read book Political Aesthetics in the Era of Shakespeare written by Christopher Pye and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The turn to political concerns in Renaissance studies, beginning in the 1980s, was dictated by forms of cultural materialism that staked their claims against the aesthetic dimension of the work. Recently, however, the more robustly political conception of the aesthetic formulated by theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Jacques Rancière has revitalized literary analysis generally and early modern studies in particular. For these theorists, aesthetics forms the crucial link between politics and the most fundamental phenomenological organization of the world, what Rancière terms the “distribution of the sensible.” Taking up this expansive conception of aesthetics, Political Aesthetics in the Era of Shakespeare suggests that the political stakes of the literary work—and Shakespeare’s work in particular—extend from the most intimate dimensions of affective response to the problem of the grounds of political society. The approaches to aesthetic thought included in this volume explore the intersections between the literary work and the full range of concerns animating the field today: political philosophy, affect theory, and ecocritical analysis of environs and habitus.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Political Wisdom written by T. Burns and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-04-03 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare's Political Wisdom offers interpretations of five Shakespearean plays with a view to the enduring guidance those plays can provide to human, political life. The plays have been chosen for their relentless attention to the questions that were once and may sometime become, or be recognized as being, the heart and soul of politics.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy written by Craig Bourne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 803 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iago’s ‘I am not what I am’ epitomises how Shakespeare’s work is rich in philosophy, from issues of deception and moral deviance to those concerning the complex nature of the self, the notions of being and identity, and the possibility or impossibility of self-knowledge and knowledge of others. Shakespeare’s plays and poems address subjects including ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and social and political philosophy. They also raise major philosophical questions about the nature of theatre, literature, tragedy, representation and fiction. The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy is the first major guide and reference source to Shakespeare and philosophy. It examines the following important topics: What roles can be played in an approach to Shakespeare by drawing on philosophical frameworks and the work of philosophers? What can philosophical theories of meaning and communication show about the dynamics of Shakespearean interactions and vice versa? How are notions such as political and social obligation, justice, equality, love, agency and the ethics of interpersonal relationships demonstrated in Shakespeare’s works? What do the plays and poems invite us to say about the nature of knowledge, belief, doubt, deception and epistemic responsibility? How can the ways in which Shakespeare’s characters behave illuminate existential issues concerning meaning, absurdity, death and nothingness? What might Shakespeare’s characters and their actions show about the nature of the self, the mind and the identity of individuals? How can Shakespeare’s works inform philosophical approaches to notions such as beauty, humour, horror and tragedy? How do Shakespeare’s works illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of fiction, the attitudes and expectations involved in engagement with theatre, and the role of acting and actors in creating representations? The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in aesthetics, philosophy of literature and philosophy of theatre, as well as those exploring Shakespeare in disciplines such as literature and theatre and drama studies. It is also relevant reading for those in areas of philosophy such as ethics, epistemology and philosophy of language.
Download or read book The Philosopher s English King written by Leon Harold Craig and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2015 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book on Shakespeare's Henriad studies the tetralogy as a work of political thought. Leon Harold Craig, author of two previous volumes on Shakespeare's political thought, argues that the four plays present Shakespeare's teaching on the problem of legitimacy, or who has the right to rule -- one of the perennial questions of political philosophy. Offering original interpretations of each of the plays, Craig discusses the demise of divine right in Richard II, political upheaval and disputed rule in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and the attempt to reestablish legitimacy on a new basis in Henry V. While focusing especially on the plays' various interpretive puzzles, Craig shows how the four plays constitute one narrative, culminating in the rule of England's most famous warrior king, Henry V, whose brilliant achievements were undone by ill fortune. Craig concludes with an epilogue on what might have been had Henry lived to consolidate his conquest of France and unify it with England under a single crown. Supported by a wealth of scholarship, both historical and critical, The Philosopher's English King makes a major contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on Shakespeare as a political thinker, providing further evidence for why the poet deserves to be recognized as a philosopher in his own right. Leon Harold Craig is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alberta.
Download or read book The Soul of Statesmanship written by Khalil M. Habib and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-09-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare’s plays explore a staggering range of political topics, from the nature of tyranny, to the practical effects of Christianity on politics and the family, to the meaning and practice of statesmanship. From great statesmen like Burke and Lincoln to the American frontiersman sitting by his rustic fire, those wrestling with the problems of the human soul and its confrontation with a puzzling world of political peril and promise have long considered these plays a source of political wisdom. The chapters in this volume support and illuminate this connection between Shakespearean drama and politics by examining a matter of central concern in both domains: the human soul. By depicting a bewildering variety of characters as they seek happiness and self-knowledge in the context of differing political regimes, family ties, religious duties, friendships, feuds, and poetic inspirations, Shakespeare illuminates the complex interdynamics between self-rule and political governance, educating readers by compelling us to share in the struggles of and relate to the tensions felt by each character in a way that no political treatise or lecture can. The authors of this volume, drawing upon expertise in fields such as political philosophy, American government, and law, explore the Bard’s dramatization of perennial questions about human nature, moral virtue, and statesmanship, demonstrating that reading his plays as works of philosophical literature enhances our understanding of political life and provides a source of advice and inspiration for the citizens and statesmen of today and tomorrow.
Download or read book Shakespeare s History Plays Rethinking Historicism written by Neema Parvini and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-21 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boldly moves criticism of Shakespeare's history plays beyond anti-humanist theoretical approaches. This important intervention in the critical and theoretical discourse of Shakespeare studies summarises, evaluates and ultimately calls time on the mode of criticism that has prevailed in Shakespeare studies over the past thirty years. It heralds a new, more dynamic way of reading Shakespeare as a supremely intelligent and creative political thinker, whose history plays address and illuminate the very questions with which cultural historicists have been so preoccupied since the 1980s. The book reignites old debates and re-energises recent bids to humanise Shakespeare and to restore agency to the individual in the critical readings of his plays.
Download or read book Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare written by John Albert Murley and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows us that Shakespeare's poetic imagination displays the essence of politics and inspires reflection on the fundamental questions of statesmanship and political leadership. This book explores themes such as classical republicanism and liberty, the rule of law and morality, the nature and limits of statesmanship, and the character of democracy.
Download or read book Fraught Decisions in Plato and Shakespeare written by Dianne Rothleder and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the reincarnation myth in Book X of Plato’s Republic, the unnamed first soul, who has lived a good life and has been rewarded in the afterlife, chooses a new life and fate, and chooses catastrophically badly. He finds himself fated to eat his own children. Despite being warned to blame only himself, he wails and blames anything and everything else in his conviction that his fate is undeserved. Though he should not be shocked because he has made this choice himself, he is incredulous because he has completely misunderstood the nature of his choice. Starting with Plato’s myth, this book looks at the errors this soul has made and considers these errors through both the Republic and a series of paired Shakespeare plays. Reading the Republic along with Othello and The Comedy of Errors, the first section focuses on the misreading of comedy and tragedy in the life of the individual; returning to the Republic and using The Merchant of Venice and Pericles, Part II focuses on the broadened context of the misuse of political and economic forces; returning again to the Republic and reading Timon of Athens and Measure for Measure, Part III focuses on the broadest context, the misunderstanding of the inseparability of birth and infinite debt. The hope of the text, and the hope of human life, is to help us avoid choosing lives that devour what we most love.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Fugitive Politics written by Thomas P. Anderson and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Establishes Shakespeares plays as some of the periods most speculative political literature Shakespeares Fugitive Politics makes the case that Shakespeares plays reveal there is always something more terrifying to the king than rebellion. The book seeks to move beyond the presumption that political evolution leads ineluctably away from autocracy and aristocracy toward republicanism and popular sovereignty. Instead, it argues for affirmative politics in Shakespeare the process of transforming scenes of negative affect into political resistance. Shakespeares Fugitive Politics makes the case that Shakespeares affirmative politics appears not in his dialectical opposition to sovereignty, absolutism, or tyranny; nor is his affirmative politics an inchoate form of republicanism on its way to becoming politically viable. Instead, this study claims that it is in the place of dissensus that the expression of the eventful condition of affirmative politics takes place a fugitive expression that the sovereign order always wishes to shut down. Key FeaturesPromotes a new understanding of 'fugitive democracy'Establishes the presence of a form of alternative politics in early modern drama, articulated through the contours of theories of sovereigntyExplores how the parameters of contemporary radical politics take shape in major Shakespeare plays, including Coriolanus, King John, Henry V, Titus Andronicus, The Winters Tale and Julius Caesar
Download or read book Thinking with Shakespeare written by Julia Reinhard Lupton and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-05-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What is a person? What company do people keep with animals, plants, and things? What are their rights? To whom are they obligated? Such questions - bearing fundamentally on the shared meaning of politics and life - animate Shakespearean drama, yet their urgency has been obscured by historicist approaches to literature.
Download or read book Shakespeare between Machiavelli and Hobbes written by Andrew Moore and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-08-29 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare between Machiavelli and Hobbes explores Shakespeare’s political outlook by comparing some of the playwright’s best-known works to the works of Italian political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli and English social contract theorist Thomas Hobbes. By situating Shakespeare ‘between’ these two thinkers, the distinctly modern trajectory of the playwright’s work becomes visible. Throughout his career, Shakespeare interrogates the divine right of kings, absolute monarchy, and the metaphor of the body politic. Simultaneously he helps to lay the groundwork for modern politics through his dramatic explorations of consent, liberty, and political violence. We can thus understand Shakespeare’s corpus as a kind of eulogy: a funeral speech dedicated to outmoded and deficient theories of politics. We can also understand him as a revolutionary political thinker who, along with Machiavelli and Hobbes, reimagined the origins and ends of government. All three thinkers understood politics primarily as a response to our mortality. They depict politics as the art of managing and organizing human bodies—caring for their needs, making space for the satisfaction of desires, and protecting them from the threat of violent death. This book features new readings of Shakespeare’s plays that illuminate the playwright’s major political preoccupations and his investment in materialist politics.
Download or read book Shakespeare Popularity and the Public Sphere written by Jeffrey S. Doty and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-16 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In late Elizabethan England, political appeals to the people were considered dangerously democratic, even seditious: the commons were supposed to have neither political voice nor will. Yet such appeals happened so often that the regime coined the word 'popularity' to condemn the pursuit of popular favor. Jeffrey S. Doty argues that in plays from Richard II to Coriolanus, Shakespeare made the tactics of popularity - and the wider public they addressed - vital aspects of politics. Shakespeare figured the public not as an extension of the royal court, but rather as a separate entity that, like the Globe's spectators who surrounded the fictional princes on its thrust stage, subjected their rulers to relentless scrutiny. For ordinary playgoers, Shakespeare's plays offered good practice for understanding the means and ends of popularity - and they continue to provide insight to the public relations strategies that have come to define modern political culture.
Download or read book Reading Shakespeare through Philosophy written by Peter Kishore Saval and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading Shakespeare through Philosophy advocates that the beauty of Shakespearean drama is inseparable from its philosophical power. Shakespeare’s plays make demands on us even beyond our linguistic attention and historical empathy: they require thinking, and the concepts of philosophy can provide us with tools to aid us in that thinking. This volume examines how philosophy can help us to re-imagine Shakespeare’s treatment of individuality, character, and destiny, particularly at certain moments in a play when a character’s relationship to space or time becomes an enigma to us. The author focuses on the dramatization of seemingly magical relationships between the individual and the cosmos, exploring and rethinking the meanings of 'individual', 'cosmos' and 'magic' through a conceptually acute reading of Shakespeare's plays. This book draws upon a variety of thinkers including Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz and Kant, in search of a revitalized philosophical criticism of Julius Caesar, Love’s Labor’s Lost, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, and Twelfth Night.
Download or read book Shakespeare in Hindsight written by Khan Amir Khan and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We know William Shakespeare matters but we cannot pinpoint, precisely, why he matters. Lacking reasons why, we do our best to involve him in others, or involve others in him. He has been branded many times over-as Catholic, Protestant, Materialist, Marxist, Psychoanalytic, Feminist, Postcolonial, Popular, Cultural, and, even, Popular-Cultural. In many ways, Shakespeare is overwrought. Why one more 'approach' to Shakespeare? One reason is because whatever these approaches say about tragedy in particular, none of them help us to feel tragedy. Or, rather, they subordinate tragedy to something else-to considerations of, say, class, race, or gender. What these approaches manage to do is explain tragedy away. What this book does is to help us feel tragedy first and foremost-hence to perceive it better. The aim of Amir Khan's counterfactual criticism of Shakespeare's tragedies, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, A Winter's Tale and Othello, then, is precisely to reanimate the tragic effect, long since lost in some deluge of explanation.
