Shakespeare's Tempest and Capitalism

Shakespeare's Tempest and Capitalism PDF Author: Helen Scott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317055950
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
In this forceful study, Helen C. Scott situates The Tempest within Marxist analyses of the ‘primitive accumulation’ of capital, which she suggests help explain the play’s continued and particular resonance. The ‘storm’ of the title refers both to Shakespeare’s Tempest hurtling through time, and to Walter Benjamin’s concept of history as a succession of violent catastrophes. Scott begins with an account of the global processes of dispossession—of the peasantry and indigenous populations—accompanying the emergence of capitalism, which generated new class relationships, new understandings of human subjectivity, and new forms of oppression around race, gender, and disability. Developing a detailed reading of the play at its moment of production in the business of theatre in 1611, Scott then moves gracefully through the global reception history, showing how its central thematic concerns and figurative patterns bespeak the upheavals and dispossessions of successive stages of capitalist development. Paying particular attention to moments of social crisis, and unearthing a radical political tradition, Scott follows the play from its hostile takeover in the Restoration, through its revival by the Romantics, and consolidation and contestation in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century transatlantic modernism generated an acutely dystopic Tempest, then during the global transformations of the 1960s postcolonial writers permanently associated it with decolonization. At century’s end the play became a vehicle for exploring intersectional oppression, and the remarkable ‘Sycorax school’ featured iconoclastic readings by writers such as Abena Busia, May Joseph, and Sylvia Wynter. Turning to both popular culture and high-profile stage productions in the twenty-first century, Scott explores the ramifications and figurative potential of Shakespeare's Tempest for global social and ecological crises today. Sensitive to the play’s original concerns and informed by recent scholarship on performance and reception history as well as disability studies, Scott’s moving analysis impels readers towards a fresh understanding of sea-change and metamorphosis as potent symbols for the literal and figurative tempests of capitalism’s old age now threatening ‘the great globe itself.’

Shakespeare's Tempest and Capitalism

Shakespeare's Tempest and Capitalism PDF Author: Helen Scott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317055950
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this forceful study, Helen C. Scott situates The Tempest within Marxist analyses of the ‘primitive accumulation’ of capital, which she suggests help explain the play’s continued and particular resonance. The ‘storm’ of the title refers both to Shakespeare’s Tempest hurtling through time, and to Walter Benjamin’s concept of history as a succession of violent catastrophes. Scott begins with an account of the global processes of dispossession—of the peasantry and indigenous populations—accompanying the emergence of capitalism, which generated new class relationships, new understandings of human subjectivity, and new forms of oppression around race, gender, and disability. Developing a detailed reading of the play at its moment of production in the business of theatre in 1611, Scott then moves gracefully through the global reception history, showing how its central thematic concerns and figurative patterns bespeak the upheavals and dispossessions of successive stages of capitalist development. Paying particular attention to moments of social crisis, and unearthing a radical political tradition, Scott follows the play from its hostile takeover in the Restoration, through its revival by the Romantics, and consolidation and contestation in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century transatlantic modernism generated an acutely dystopic Tempest, then during the global transformations of the 1960s postcolonial writers permanently associated it with decolonization. At century’s end the play became a vehicle for exploring intersectional oppression, and the remarkable ‘Sycorax school’ featured iconoclastic readings by writers such as Abena Busia, May Joseph, and Sylvia Wynter. Turning to both popular culture and high-profile stage productions in the twenty-first century, Scott explores the ramifications and figurative potential of Shakespeare's Tempest for global social and ecological crises today. Sensitive to the play’s original concerns and informed by recent scholarship on performance and reception history as well as disability studies, Scott’s moving analysis impels readers towards a fresh understanding of sea-change and metamorphosis as potent symbols for the literal and figurative tempests of capitalism’s old age now threatening ‘the great globe itself.’

Shakespeare's Tempest and Capitalism

Shakespeare's Tempest and Capitalism PDF Author: Helen C Scott
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781315608792
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"Shakespeare's Tempest attracted countless anti-colonial writers during the period of decolonization in Africa and the Caribbean, and continues to offer rich material for writers and directors interested in the intimate and varied connections between war and empire. In her forceful study, Helen Scott situates The Tempest within Marxist analyses of the early modern process of 'primitive accumulation' of capital, which she suggests offer an explanation for the play's continued resonance at the turn of the twenty-first century. Beginning with the rise of 'postcolonial Shakespeares' followed by a reading of the play at its moment of production in 1611, Scott moves gracefully through more than two centuries of theatrical productions and literary appropriations to map the way the central thematic concerns and figurative patterns of the play bespeak the upheavals and dispossessions that accompanied the birth and growth of capitalism. She traces colonial interpretations of the play from Edmond Malone's 1803 reading to Beerbohm Tree's staging at the end of the nineteenth century, through Octave Mannoni's 1948 Prospero and Caliban and Philip Mason's 1962 'Prospero's Magic,' to the ascendency of postcolonial criticism in the 1980s. The play's significance during the era of national libration struggles emerges in Scott's readings of works by Aimé Cesaire, George Lamming, and Edward Kamau Brathwaite. Registering anxieties about imperialism and war in mid-twentieth-century Britain, The Tempest became a vehicle for exploring the intersection of oppression around race, class, gender, and sexuality in works by W. H. Auden, Marina Warner, Derek Jarman, and Philip Osment. Turning to twenty-first century productions, including Rupert Goold's 2006 Royal Shakespeare Company staging and Julie Taymor's 2010 film, Scott explores the ramifications and figurative potential of Shakespeare's play for global culture. Sensitive to the play's original concerns and informed by scholarship on performance history, Scott's moving study impels readers towards a fresh understanding of how the metaphors of sea change and metamorphosis betoken the literal and figurative tempests of capitalism's old age that now threaten 'the great globe itself.'"--Provided by publisher.

Shakespeare Studies

Shakespeare Studies PDF Author: Leeds Barroll
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838638712
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Annual publication including essays and reviews of new books which deal with Shakespeare and his age

Caliban and the Witch

Caliban and the Witch PDF Author: Silvia Federici
Publisher: Autonomedia
ISBN: 1570270597
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
"Women, the body and primitive accumulation"--Cover.

Shakespeare and Economic Theory

Shakespeare and Economic Theory PDF Author: David Hawkes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472576993
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Over the last 20 years, the concept of 'economic' activity has come to seem inseparable from psychological, semiotic and ideological experiences. In fact, the notion of the 'economy' as a discrete area of life seems increasingly implausible. This returns us to the situation of Shakespeare's England, where the financial had yet to be differentiated from other forms of representation. This book shows how concepts and concerns that were until recently considered purely economic affected the entire range of sixteenth and seventeenth century life. Using the work of such critics as Jean-Christophe Agnew, Douglas Bruster, Hugh Grady and many others, Shakespeare and Economic Theory traces economic literary criticism to its cultural and historical roots, and discusses its main practitioners. Providing new readings of Timon of Athens, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and The Tempest, David Hawkes shows how it can reveal previously unappreciated qualities of Shakespeare's work.

Revisionist Shakespeare

Revisionist Shakespeare PDF Author: P. Cefalu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403973652
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Revisionist Shakespeare appropriates revisionist history in order to both criticize traditional transitional interpretations of Shakespearean drama and to offer a new methodology for understanding representations of social conflict in Shakespeare's play and in Early Modern English culture. Rather than argue that Shakespearean drama allegorizes historical transitions and ideological polarization, Revisionist Shakespeare argues that Shakespeare's plays explore the nature of internally contradictory Early Modern institutions and belief-systems that are only indirectly related to competing political and class ideologies. Such institutions and belief-systems include Elizabethan strategies for the management of vagrancy, the nature of Jacobean statecraft, objective and subjective theories of economic value, Protestant ethical theory, and Augustinian notions of sinful habituation. The book looks at five of Shakespeare's plays: The Tempest , Coriolanus , The Merchant of Venice , King Lear , and Hamlet .

Imperial Ventures

Imperial Ventures PDF Author: Benjamin VanWagoner
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512827002
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Links early modern English drama and empire studies, exploring how staged scenes of maritime peril created a new form of economic uncertainty Imperial Ventures links early modern English drama and empire studies, exploring how staged scenes of maritime peril created a new form of economic uncertainty around the turn of the seventeenth century, amid London’s explosion in commercial colonialism. While the hazards of global maritime trade became increasingly apparent during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the word “risk” did not enter English usage until around 1660. The prevailing scholarly narrative has linked uncertainty to concepts such as “chance,” “accident,” and “providence,” but this book reveals that these fragmentary concepts were reordered into an economic abstraction, and that the theater was a key site for that process. Playwrights reached for ways to represent this new uncertainty, and audiences watched perilous voyages set in colonial contexts and dramatized in increasingly typical forms. Imperial Ventures is organized by these forms, with five chapters examining scenes of shipwreck, pirates, enslavement, colonial subjection, and perilous news across a wide range of early modern plays. Benjamin VanWagoner shows how maritime drama connected English venturing to economic vulnerability in increasingly systematic ways, helping to develop the economic logic that would come to be codified as risk. In revealing this process, Imperial Ventures establishes the unique protocolonial status of early modern England—in the theater and at sea—and demonstrates how risk became a perverse instrument for justifying Anglophone imperialism.

All that is Solid Melts Into Air

All that is Solid Melts Into Air PDF Author: Marshall Berman
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9780860917854
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
The experience of modernization -- the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world -- and modernism in art, literature and architecture are brilliantly integrated in this account.

Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory: Functionalism, Conflict and Action

Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory: Functionalism, Conflict and Action PDF Author: Paramjit S. Judge
Publisher: Pearson Education India
ISBN: 8131799638
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory: Functionalism, Conflict and Action provides an extensive analysis of classical sociological theory by giving readers an introduction to the life and ideas of all the eminent thinkers. The book begins by giving an overview of the emergence of sociology as a discipline in the background of socio-economic development that characterized Europe in 18th century. The first part of the book examines how the theorists viewed society as an organism; the second part takes cognizance of the conflict theory and third part deals with the emergence of action theory which took ambivalent position with regard to science and emphasized human agency and consciousness. Written in a very simple language, this book will help students delve deeper into the subject.

Materialist Shakespeare

Materialist Shakespeare PDF Author: Ivo Kamps
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9780860914631
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Receptive to influences of such diverse theorists as Derrida, Jameson, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan and Althusser, materialist Shakespeare criticism has long since left behind the days of 'vulgar' Marxism and has emerged as a rich interpretive practice. The essays chosen for this book cover all of Shakespeare's dramatic genres and include works on King Lear, Othello, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew and Julius Caesar. Contributors: Paul Delany; Louis Adrian Montrose; Walter Cohen; Alan Sinfield; Stephen Greenblatt; Michael D. Bristol; Katherine Eismann Maus; James R. Andreas; Robert Weimann; Graham Holderness; Lynda E. Boose; John Drakakis; Claire McEacherm; Frederic Jameson; and Ivo Kamps.