Shakespearean Pragmatism

Shakespearean Pragmatism PDF Author: Lars Engle
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226209425
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Just as Shakespeare's theater was an economic gamble, subject to the workings of a market, so the plays themselves submit actions, persons, and motives to an audience's judgment. Such a theatrical economy, Lars Engle suggests, provides a model for the way in which truth is determined and assessed in the world at large—a model much like that offered by contemporary pragmatism. To Engle, the problems of worth, price, and value that appear so frequently in Shakespeare's works reveal a playwright dramatizing the negotiable nature of perception and belief—in short, the nature of his audience's purchase on reality. This innovative argument is the first to view Shakespeare in the context of contemporary pragmatism and to show that Shakespeare in many ways anticipated pragmatism as it has been developed in the thought of Richard Rorty, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, and others. With detailed reference to the sonnets and plays, Engle explores Shakespeare's tendency to treat knowledge, truth, and certainty as relatively stable goods within a theatrical economy of social interaction. He shows the playwright recasting kingship, aristocracy, and poetic immortality in pragmatic terms. As attentive to history as it is to contemporary theory, this book mediates between current and traditional accounts of Shakespeare. In doing so, it offers a sweeping new account of Shakespeare's enterprise that will interest philosophers, literary theorists, and Shakespeare scholars alike.

Shakespearean Pragmatism

Shakespearean Pragmatism PDF Author: Lars Engle
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226209425
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
Just as Shakespeare's theater was an economic gamble, subject to the workings of a market, so the plays themselves submit actions, persons, and motives to an audience's judgment. Such a theatrical economy, Lars Engle suggests, provides a model for the way in which truth is determined and assessed in the world at large—a model much like that offered by contemporary pragmatism. To Engle, the problems of worth, price, and value that appear so frequently in Shakespeare's works reveal a playwright dramatizing the negotiable nature of perception and belief—in short, the nature of his audience's purchase on reality. This innovative argument is the first to view Shakespeare in the context of contemporary pragmatism and to show that Shakespeare in many ways anticipated pragmatism as it has been developed in the thought of Richard Rorty, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, and others. With detailed reference to the sonnets and plays, Engle explores Shakespeare's tendency to treat knowledge, truth, and certainty as relatively stable goods within a theatrical economy of social interaction. He shows the playwright recasting kingship, aristocracy, and poetic immortality in pragmatic terms. As attentive to history as it is to contemporary theory, this book mediates between current and traditional accounts of Shakespeare. In doing so, it offers a sweeping new account of Shakespeare's enterprise that will interest philosophers, literary theorists, and Shakespeare scholars alike.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare PDF Author: Arthur F. Kinney
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199566100
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 846

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Book Description
Contains forty original essays.

Shakespeare and the Economic Imperative

Shakespeare and the Economic Imperative PDF Author: Peter F. Grav
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135894132
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Working from the perspective of the new economic criticism, this study uses close reading and historical contextualization to examine the relationship between interpersonal relationships and economics in the plays of Shakespeare.

Money and the Age of Shakespeare: Essays in New Economic Criticism

Money and the Age of Shakespeare: Essays in New Economic Criticism PDF Author: L. Woodbridge
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403982465
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
In this collection literary scholars, theorists and historians deploy new economic techniques to illuminate English Renaissance literature in fresh ways. Contributors variously explore poetry's precarious perch between gift and commodity; the longing for family in The Comedy of Errors as symbolically expressing the alienating pressures of mercantilism; Measure for Measure 's representation of singlewomen and the feminization of poverty; the collision between two views of money in a possible collaboration between Shakespeare and Middleton; the cultural spread of an accounting mentality and quantitative thinking; and money as it crosses the frontier between price and pricelessness, and from early bodily-injury insurance schemes to The Merchant of Venice .

Shakespeare Survey

Shakespeare Survey PDF Author: Stanley Wells
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521541848
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Shakespeare Survey is a yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production. Since 1948 Survey has published the best international scholarship in English and many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism. Each volume is devoted to a theme, or play, or group of plays; each also contains a section of reviews of the previous year's textual and critical studies and of major British performances. The books are illustrated with a variety of Shakespearean images and production photographs. The current editor of Survey is Peter Holland. The first eighteen volumes were edited by Allardyce Nicoll, numbers 19-33 by Kenneth Muir and numbers 34-52 by Stanley Wells. The virtues of accessible scholarship and a keen interest in performance, from Shakespeare's time to our own, have characterised the journal from the start. Now backnumbers are gradually being reissued in paperback.

Special Section, Shakespeare and Montaigne Revisited

Special Section, Shakespeare and Montaigne Revisited PDF Author: Graham Bradshaw
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754655893
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 980

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Book Description
This year including a special section on "Shakespeare and Montaigne Revisited," The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues to provide an annual survey of important issues and developments in contemporary Shakespeare studies. Contributors to this issue come from the US and the UK, Canada, Sweden, Japan and Australia. This issue includes an interview with veteran American actor Alvin Epstein during his recent acclaimed performance of King Lear for the Actors' Shakespeare project in Boston.

How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage

How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage PDF Author: Peter Lake
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300225660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 683

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Book Description
A masterful, highly engaging analysis of how Shakespeare’s plays intersected with the politics and culture of Elizabethan England With an ageing, childless monarch, lingering divisions due to the Reformation, and the threat of foreign enemies, Shakespeare’s England was fraught with unparalleled anxiety and complicated problems. In this monumental work, Peter Lake reveals, more than any previous critic, the extent to which Shakespeare’s plays speak to the depth and sophistication of Elizabethan political culture and the Elizabethan imagination. Lake reveals the complex ways in which Shakespeare’s major plays engaged with the events of his day, particularly regarding the uncertain royal succession, theological and doctrinal debates, and virtue and virtù in politics. Through his plays, Lake demonstrates, Shakespeare was boldly in conversation with his audience about a range of contemporary issues. This remarkable literary and historical analysis pulls the curtain back on what Shakespeare was really telling his audience and what his plays tell us today about the times in which they were written.

The Routledge Guide to William Shakespeare

The Routledge Guide to William Shakespeare PDF Author: Robert Shaughnessy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136855033
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Demystifying and contextualising Shakespeare for the twenty-first century, this book offers both an introduction to the subject for beginners as well as an invaluable resource for more experienced Shakespeareans. In this friendly, structured guide, Robert Shaughnessy: introduces Shakespeare’s life and works in context, providing crucial historical background looks at each of Shakespeare’s plays in turn, considering issues of historical context, contemporary criticism and performance history provides detailed discussion of twentieth-century Shakespearean criticism, exploring the theories, debates and discoveries that shape our understanding of Shakespeare today looks at contemporary performances of Shakespeare on stage and screen provides further critical reading by play outlines detailed chronologies of Shakespeare’s life and works and also of twentieth-century criticism The companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/shaughnessy contains student-focused materials and resources, including an interactive timeline and annotated weblinks.

Shakespeare's Roman Trilogy

Shakespeare's Roman Trilogy PDF Author: Paul A. Cantor
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022646251X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Paul A. Cantor first probed Shakespeare’s Roman plays—Coriolanus, Julius Caeser, and Antony and Cleopatra—in his landmark Shakespeare’s Rome (1976). With Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy, he now argues that these plays form an integrated trilogy that portrays the tragedy not simply of their protagonists but of an entire political community. Cantor analyzes the way Shakespeare chronicles the rise and fall of the Roman Republic and the emergence of the Roman Empire. The transformation of the ancient city into a cosmopolitan empire marks the end of the era of civic virtue in antiquity, but it also opens up new spiritual possibilities that Shakespeare correlates with the rise of Christianity and thus the first stirrings of the medieval and the modern worlds. More broadly, Cantor places Shakespeare’s plays in a long tradition of philosophical speculation about Rome, with special emphasis on Machiavelli and Nietzsche, two thinkers who provide important clues on how to read Shakespeare’s works. In a pathbreaking chapter, he undertakes the first systematic comparison of Shakespeare and Nietzsche on Rome, exploring their central point of contention: Did Christianity corrupt the Roman Empire or was the corruption of the Empire the precondition of the rise of Christianity? Bringing Shakespeare into dialogue with other major thinkers about Rome, Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy reveals the true profundity of the Roman Plays.

Shakespeare's Political and Economic Language

Shakespeare's Political and Economic Language PDF Author: Vivian Thomas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474216080
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Shakespeare's plays are pervaded by political and economic words and concepts, not only in the histories and tragedies but also in the comedies and romances. The lexicon of political and economic language in Shakespeare does not consist merely of arcane terms whose shifting meanings require exposition, but includes an enormous number of relatively simple words which possess a structural significance in the configuration of meanings. Often operating by such means as puns, they open up a surprising number of possibilities. The dictionary reveals the conceptual nucleus of each term and explores the contexts in which it is embedded. The overlap between the political and economic dimensions of a word in Shakespeare's drama is particularly exciting as he is highly attuned to the interactions of these two spheres of human activity and their centrality in human affairs.