The Shakespearean Ethic

The Shakespearean Ethic PDF Author: John Vyvyan
Publisher: Shepheard Walwyn (Publishers) Limited
ISBN: 0856832847
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Get Book Here

Book Description
Originally published by Chatto & Windus in 1959, this book has long been out of print and largely neglected by Shakespearean scholars. It offers a viewpoint seldom considered: an unusual and exceptionally clear insight into Shakespeare's philosophy. It does so with freshness, modesty and conviction. Appreciating the danger Shakespeare faced in writing at a time of major religious intolerance, Vyvyan shows how subtly the plays explore aspects of the perennial philosophy allegorically. In doing so, Shakespeare raises the fundamental question of ethics: What ought we to do? 'Shakespeare,' says the author, 'is never ethically neutral. He is never in doubt as to whether the souls of his characters are rising or falling.' There is a constant pattern in the tragedies: 'first the hero is untrue to his own self, then he casts out love, then conscience is gone - or rather inverted - and the devil enters into him.' Vyvyan shows us this pattern of damnation, or its counterpart - a pattern of regeneration - working out in certain plays, contrasting Hamlet with Measure for Measure and Othello with The Winter's Tale, where a similar dilemma and choice confront the hero. His intuitive insights also illumine Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus which focus on the fall, whereas The Tempest explores most fully the pattern of regeneration and creative mercy. Here is a book, both thought-provoking and persuasive, which will send many readers back to Shakespeare's plays with fresh vision and clearer understanding. To assist such readers, this edition cross-references the quotations in the text to the relevant place in the play. The text has been completely reset and the index expanded. John Vyvyan, born in 1908 in Sussex, was educated mainly in Switzerland. His first profession was archaeology, and he worked with Sir Flinders Petrie in the Middle East.

The Shakespearean Ethic

The Shakespearean Ethic PDF Author: John Vyvyan
Publisher: Shepheard Walwyn (Publishers) Limited
ISBN: 0856832847
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Get Book Here

Book Description
Originally published by Chatto & Windus in 1959, this book has long been out of print and largely neglected by Shakespearean scholars. It offers a viewpoint seldom considered: an unusual and exceptionally clear insight into Shakespeare's philosophy. It does so with freshness, modesty and conviction. Appreciating the danger Shakespeare faced in writing at a time of major religious intolerance, Vyvyan shows how subtly the plays explore aspects of the perennial philosophy allegorically. In doing so, Shakespeare raises the fundamental question of ethics: What ought we to do? 'Shakespeare,' says the author, 'is never ethically neutral. He is never in doubt as to whether the souls of his characters are rising or falling.' There is a constant pattern in the tragedies: 'first the hero is untrue to his own self, then he casts out love, then conscience is gone - or rather inverted - and the devil enters into him.' Vyvyan shows us this pattern of damnation, or its counterpart - a pattern of regeneration - working out in certain plays, contrasting Hamlet with Measure for Measure and Othello with The Winter's Tale, where a similar dilemma and choice confront the hero. His intuitive insights also illumine Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus which focus on the fall, whereas The Tempest explores most fully the pattern of regeneration and creative mercy. Here is a book, both thought-provoking and persuasive, which will send many readers back to Shakespeare's plays with fresh vision and clearer understanding. To assist such readers, this edition cross-references the quotations in the text to the relevant place in the play. The text has been completely reset and the index expanded. John Vyvyan, born in 1908 in Sussex, was educated mainly in Switzerland. His first profession was archaeology, and he worked with Sir Flinders Petrie in the Middle East.

The Shakespearean Ethic

The Shakespearean Ethic PDF Author: John Vyvyan
Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn
ISBN: 0856833754
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Get Book Here

Book Description
With modesty and conviction, this edition offers a viewpoint seldomly considered: an unusual and exceptionally clear insight into Shakespeare’s philosophy. Appreciating the danger Shakespeare faced in writing at a time of major religious intolerance, this fresh examination demonstrates how subtly his plays allegorically explore aspects of the perennial philosophy. In doing so, it argues, Shakespeare raises the fundamental question of ethics. Both thought provoking and persuasive, this book also contrasts Hamlet with Measure for Measure and Othello with The Winter’s Tale in order to expose the dilemmas that confront its heroes.

Shakespeare's Moral Compass

Shakespeare's Moral Compass PDF Author: Neema Parvini
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474432891
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines the aesthetics, concepts and politics of chaotic and obscured moving images.

The Shakespearean Ethic

The Shakespearean Ethic PDF Author: John Vyvyan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780702248764
Category : Didactic drama, English
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
'More perceptive and convincing than a great deal that has ever been written on the subject 'close and attentive scholarship 'shrewd and ingenious observations.' A.L. Rowse, Daily Telegraph'Original and stimulating, Mr Vyvyan's thesis is important and serious: serious in the sense that his reading of the plays and his supporting reading into Shakespeare's climate of ideas is deep, connected and wide.' Times Literary Supplement'Two important insights bind together the central argument of this book ... Firstly, and most importantly, the author tells us that in Shakespeare "everything happens.

Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation

Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation PDF Author: Alexa Huang
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137375779
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Making an important new contribution to rapidly expanding fields of study surrounding the adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare, Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation is the first book to address the intersection of ethics, aesthetics, authority, and authenticity.

Shakespeare's History Plays

Shakespeare's History Plays PDF Author: Neema Parvini
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 147442354X
Category : LITERARY CRITICISM
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
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

Shakespeare and the Stars

Shakespeare and the Stars PDF Author: Priscilla Costello
Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
ISBN: 0892542160
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 552

Get Book Here

Book Description
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, this book offers fresh and exciting insights into the ever-popular works of the world's greatest playwright. It specifically highlights Shakespeare's use of the archetypal language of astrological symbolism in both obvious and subtle ways. Such references would have been commonly known in Shakespeare's time, but their deeper significance is lost to modern-day playgoers and readers. The first half of the book describes the Elizabethan worldview and how the seven known planets were considered an integral part of the cosmos and instrumental in shaping human character. The second half of the book examines six of Shakespeare's best-loved plays in the light of astrological symbolism, showing how they are entirely keyed to a specific zodiacal sign and its associated (or ruling) planet. The chosen plays are A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, The Tempest, and King Lear. Each chapter incorporates information and examples from astrological tradition, classical and Renaissance philosophy, Greek and Roman mythology, esoteric wisdom, modern psychology (especially that of C. G. Jung), and great literature. Thoroughly researched and well-illustrated, this book illuminates the plays from a fresh perspective that will deepen and profoundly transform how we understand them.

Shakespeare's Big Men

Shakespeare's Big Men PDF Author: Richard van Oort
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442650079
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shakespeare's Big Men examines five Shakespearean tragedies - Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus - through the lens of generative anthropology and the insights of its founder, Eric Gans. Generative anthropology's theory of the origins of human society explains the social function of tragedy: to defer our resentment against the "big men" who dominate society by letting us first identify with the tragic protagonist and his resentment, then allowing us to repudiate the protagonist's resentful rage and achieve theatrical catharsis. Drawing on this hypothesis, Richard van Oort offers inspired readings of Shakespeare's plays and their representations of desire, resentment, guilt, and evil. His analysis revives the universal spirit in Shakespearean criticism, illustrating how the plays can serve as a way to understand the ethical dilemma of resentment and discover within ourselves the nature of the human experience.

Joss Whedon as Shakespearean Moralist

Joss Whedon as Shakespearean Moralist PDF Author: J. Douglas Rabb
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786474408
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing on the works of Shakespeare and American screenwriter Joss Whedon, this study in narrative ethics contends that Whedon is the Shakespeare of our time. The Bard wrote before the influence of the modern moral philosophers, while Whedon is writing in the postmodern period. It is argued that Whedon's work is more in harmony with the early modern values of Shakespeare than with modern ethics, which trace their origin to 17th and 18th century moral philosophy. This study includes a detailed discussion of representative works of Shakespeare and Whedon, showing how they can and should be read as forms of narrative ethics.

The Shakespearean International Yearbook

The Shakespearean International Yearbook PDF Author: Tom Bishop
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100050560X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book Here

Book Description
Publishing its nineteenth volume, The Shakespearean International Yearbook surveys the present state of Shakespeare studies, addressing issues that are fundamental to our interpretive encounter with Shakespeare’s work and his time, across the whole spectrum of his literary output. Contributions are solicited from scholars across the field, from both hemispheres of the globe. New trends are evaluated from the point of view of established scholarship, and emerging work in the field is encouraged. Each issue includes a special section under the guidance of a specialist Guest Editor, along with coverage of the current state of the field in other aspects. An essential reference tool for scholars of early modern literature and culture, this annual publication captures, from year to year, current and developing thought in Shakespeare scholarship and theater practice worldwide. There is a particular emphasis on Shakespeare studies in global contexts.