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 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 From Humanism to Hobbes written by Quentin Skinner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers new insights into the works of Machiavelli, Shakespeare and especially Hobbes by focusing on their use of rhetoric.
Download or read book Machiavelli The Prince written by Niccolo Machiavelli and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1988-10-28 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Skinner presents a lucid analysis of Machiavelli's text as a response to the world of Florentine politics.
Download or read book Politics Literature and Film in Conversation written by Matthew D. Dinan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a series of essays in honor of noted scholar of political theory, Mary P. Nichols. The essays reflect Nichols’ pathbreaking work in ancient Greek political thought, as well as her influential treatments of works of literature and film in conversation with political theory. Part I: Conversations Concerning Love and Friendship features essays about the philosophical meaning of human connection and affection. Part II: Conversations Between Politics and Poetry looks at the political significance of art, and the ways in which political rule can be understood to be “artistic” or poetic. Part III: Conversations from Tragedy to Comedy considers whether the human need for community is something to be lamented or celebrated. Broad in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, the essays in this volume address authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Mary Wollstonecraft, G.W.F. Hegel, Jane Austen, Henry James, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, as well as the films of Woody Allen and Whit Stillman.
Download or read book The Artistic Foundations of Nations and Citizens written by Ann Ward and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines politics through the lens of art and literature. Through discussion on great works of visual art, literature, and cultural representations of political thought in the medieval, early modern, and American eras, it explores the relevance of the nation-state to human freedom and flourishing, as well as the concept of citizenship and statesmanship that it implies, in contrast to that of the ‘global community’. The essays in this volume focus on shifting notions of various core political concepts like citizenship, republicanism, and nationalism from antiquity to the present-day to provide a systematic understanding of their evolving histories through Western Art and literature. It highlights works such as the Bayeux Tapestry, Shakespeare’s Henry V, Henry VI, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twain’s Joan of Arc and Hermann’s Nichts als Gespenster, among several other canonical works of political interest. Further, it questions if we should now look beyond the nation-state to some form of tans-national, global community to pursue the human freedom desired by progressives, or look at smaller forms of community resembling the polis to pursue the friendship and nobility valued by the ancients. The volume will be invaluable to students and teachers of political science, especially political theory and philosophy, visual arts, and world literature.
Download or read book Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought written by David Armitage and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first collaborative volume to place Shakespeare's works within the landscape of early modern political thought. Until recently, literary scholars have not generally treated Shakespeare as a participant in the political thought of his time, unlike his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney. At the same time, historians of political thought have rarely turned their attention to major works of poetry and drama. A distinguished international and interdisciplinary team of contributors examines the full range of Shakespeare's writings in order to challenge conventional interpretations of plays central to the canon, such as Hamlet; open up novel perspectives on works rarely considered to be political, such as the Sonnets; and focus on those that have been largely neglected, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor. The result is a coherent and challenging portrait of Shakespeare's distinctive engagement with the characteristic questions of early modern political thought.
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 Rhetoric and Contingency written by DS Mayfield and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 1115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human life is susceptible of changing suddenly, of shifting inadvertently, of appearing differently, of varying unpredictably, of being altered deliberately, of advancing fortuitously, of commencing or ending accidentally, of a certain malleability. In theory, any human being is potentially capacitated to conceive of—and convey—the chance, view, or fact that matters may be otherwise, or not at all; with respect to other lifeforms, this might be said animal’s distinctive characteristic. This state of play is both an everyday phenomenon, and an indispensable prerequisite for exceptional innovations in culture and science: contingency is the condition of possibility for any of the arts—be they dominantly concerned with thinking, crafting, or enacting. While their scope and method may differ, the (f)act of reckoning with—and taking advantage of—contingency renders rhetoricians and philosophers associates after all. In this regard, Aristotle and Blumenberg will be exemplary, hence provide the framework. Between these diachronic bridgeheads, close readings applying the nexus of rhetoric and contingency to a selection of (Early) Modern texts and authors are intercalated—among them La Celestina, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Wilde, Fontane.
Download or read book The Politics of Perfection written by Kimberly Hurd Hale and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film provides an exploration of the relationship between modern technological progress and classical liberalism. Each chapter provides a detailed analysis of a film or novel, including Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. These works of fiction are examined through the lens of political thinkers ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt. The compatibility of classical liberalism and technology is questioned, using fiction as a window into Western society’s views on politics, economics, religion, technology, and the family. This project explores the intersection between human nature and creation, particularly artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, using works of literature and film to access cultural concerns. Each of the works featured asks a question about the relationship between technology and creation. Technology also allows humanity to create new types of life in the forms of artificial intelligence and genetically engineered beings. This book studies works of literature and film as evidence of the contemporary unease with the progress of technology and its effect on the political realm.
Download or read book From Humanism to Hobbes written by Quentin Skinner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this collection is to illustrate the pervasive influence of humanist rhetoric on early-modern literature and philosophy. The first half of the book focuses on the classical rules of judicial rhetoric. One chapter considers the place of these rules in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, while two others concentrate on the technique of rhetorical redescription, pointing to its use in Machiavelli's The Prince as well as in several of Shakespeare's plays, notably Coriolanus. The second half of the book examines the humanist background to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. A major new essay discusses his typically humanist preoccupation with the visual presentation of his political ideas, while other chapters explore the rhetorical sources of his theory of persons and personation, thereby offering new insights into his views about citizenship, political representation, rights and obligations and the concept of the state.
Download or read book Shakespeare Machiavelli and Montaigne written by Hugh Grady and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The four plays of Shakespeare's Henriad and the slightly later Hamlet brilliantly explore interconnections between political power and interior subjectivity as productions of the newly emerging constellation we call modernity. Hugh Grady argues that for Shakespeare subjectivity was a critical, negative mode of resistance to power--not, as many recent critics have asserted, its abettor.
Download or read book Mighty Opposites written by Michael Platt and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-19 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fall of 1598, the First Secretary of the United Italian Republic, the nigh-immortal Machiavelli sets out for England on a diplomatic mission, in hopes of enlisting Shakespeare in his grand enterprise. Then ensues a correspondence on Shakespeare's first Henriad, which moving to the second Henriad, intensifies, and come spring, as Shakespeare works on Henry V and as they grow close, Shakespeare invites Machiavelli to Stratford to converse face to face. But will it be eye to eye? From their lively engagement, thick with fell incensed thoughts, "the wiser sort" may discover both how much these mighty opposites--one the founder of modern political philosophy and the other the greatest modern poet--both agree and disagree, on how cities may prosper and souls may thrive. FELL INCENSED POINTS OF MIGHTY OPPOSITES "Everywhere today human life is judged guilty if it swims and innocent if it drowns." "Xenophon knew Socrates. Xenophon looked up to Socrates. You're no Xenophon." "... though tyrannical Richard III is repulsive to your audience, that only swaddles the insights in his witty use of Christian teachings to justify his crimes, to mock Christians, and to blaspheme God, from detection, and leaves them a foundling on the doorsteps of the few, and shields you, the only begetter." "No...evil is not always the best policy." "Richard II made tyrannical by "divine right"; Richard III made a tyrant by damnation from birth; Henry VI rendered contemptible by clerical education; and the people acquiescent to the tyrannical 'powers that be.' Could a more powerful case against Christianity be made than your Histories!" "Your 'comedies' ... so devoid of merriment. And your tragedies...none." "It is not true I recognize no noble failures. I recognized Cesare Borgia. His failure to unite Italy...and drive out the barbarians, was the noblest failure in modern times.... Only fortune defeated Cesare. As to tragedy, what is more tragic than Christianity?" "You say a lot about murder, how good it can be, but nothing about death. The men I put on stage, like the ones I know, like myself, think about death. Does something or nothing come after? We don't know, not for sure. We wish we did. And we think about it. It's there all the time. After a fit of anger, a rush of activity, an hour of love, after the day's labor, or the evening's festivity, there it is waiting for us. And that is why my characters always give a speech as they are dying." "Demand me nothing." "So apt for philosophy, were he not so unsure of truth."
Download or read book Shakespeare and Machiavelli written by John Alan Roe and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2002 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study concludes with two chapters on the Roman plays and assesses Shakespeare's representation of the problem of conscience (Julius Caesar) and magnanimity (Antony and Cleopatra) in the light of Machiavelli's republicanism."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Machiavelli s Legacy written by Timothy Fuller and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Machiavelli's Legacy' situates Machiavelli in general and 'The Prince' in particular at the birth of modernity. Joining the conversation with established Machiavelli scholars are political theorists, Americanists, and international relations scholars, ensuring a diversity of viewpoints and approaches
Download or read book Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England written by Alessandro Arienzo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking into consideration the political and literary issues hanging upon the circulation of Machiavelli's works in England, this volume highlights how topics and ideas stemming from Machiavelli's books - including but not limited to the Prince - strongly influenced the contemporary political debate. The first section discusses early reactions to Machiavelli's works, focusing on authors such as Reginald Pole and William Thomas, depicting their complex interaction with Machiavelli. In section two, different features of Machiavelli's reading in Tudor literary and political culture are discussed, moving well beyond the traditional image of the tyrant or of the evil Machiavel. Machiavelli's historiography and republicanism and their influences on Tudor culture are discussed with reference to topical authors such as Walter Raleigh, Alberico Gentili, Philip Sidney; his role in contemporary dramatic writing, especially as concerns Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, is taken into consideration. The last section explores Machiavelli's influence on English political culture in the seventeenth century, focusing on reason of state and political prudence, and discussing writers such as Henry Parker, Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington, Thomas Hobbes and Anthony Ascham. Overall, contributors put Machiavelli's image in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England into perspective, analyzing his role within courtly and prudential politics, and the importance of his ideological proposal in the tradition of republicanism and parliamentarianism.
Download or read book Niccol Machiavelli the Prince 1532 Thomas Hobbes the Leviathan 1651 and the Constitution of Pennsylvania 1776 in One Binding written by Niccolò Machiavelli and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-29 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince (1532) Thomas Hobbes: The Leviathan (1651) and The Constitution of Pennsylvania (1776) In One Binding Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli, Founding Fathers of the United States of America Big Print Version - Excerpt The Prince Chapter One All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities.Principalities are either hereditary, in which the family has been long established; or they are new.The new are either entirely new, as was Milan to Francesco Sforza, or they are, as it were, members annexed to the hereditary state of the prince who has acquired them, as was the kingdom of Naples to that of the King of Spain.Such dominions thus acquired are either accustomed to live under a prince, or to live in freedom; and are acquired either by the arms of the prince himself, or of others, or else by fortune or by ability.
