Of Levinas And Shakespeare

Scholars have used Levinas as a lens through which to view many authors and texts, fields of endeavor, and works of art. Yet no book-length work or dedicated volume has brought this thoughtful lens to bear in a sustained discussion of the works of Shakespeare. It should not surprise anyone that Levinas identified his own thinking as Shakespearean. "The play's the thing" for both, or put differently, the observation of intersubjectivity is. What may surprise and indeed delight all learned readers is to consider what we might yet gain from considering each in light of the other. Comprising leading scholars in philosophy and literature, Of Levinas and Shakespeare: "To See Another Thus" is the first book-length work to treat both great thinkers. Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth dominate the discussion; however, essays also address Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, and even poetry, such as Venus and Adonis. Volume editors planned and contributors deliver a thorough treatment from multiple perspectives, yet none intends this volume to be the last word on the subject; rather, they would have it be a provocation to further discussion, an enticement for richer enjoyment, and an invitation for deeper contemplation of Levinas and Shakespeare.

This book celebrates the theatrical excitement and philosophical meanings of human interaction in Shakespeare.

Unfolding as a series of materially oriented studies ranging from chairs, machines and doors to trees, animals and food, this book retells the story of Renaissance personhood as one of material relations and embodied experience, rather than of emergent notions of individuality and freedom.

This volume focuses on hospitality as a theoretically and historically crucial phenomenon in Shakespeare's work with ramifications for contemporary thought and practice. Drawing a multifaceted picture of Shakespeare's scenes of hospitality—with their numerous scenes of greeting, feeding, entertaining, and sheltering—the collection demonstrates how hospitality provides a compelling frame for the core ethical, political, theological, and ecological questions of Shakespeare's time and our own. By reading Shakespeare's plays in conjunction with contemporary theory as well as early modern texts and objects—including almanacs, recipe books, husbandry manuals, and religious tracts — this book reimagines Shakespeare's playworld as one charged with the risks of hosting (rape and seduction, war and betrayal, enchantment and disenchantment) and the limits of generosity (how much can or should one give the guest, with what attitude or comportment, and under what circumstances?). This substantial volume maps the terrain of Shakespearean hospitality in its rich complexity, demonstrating the importance of historical, rhetorical, and phenomenological approaches to this diverse subject.

Focusing on works by Shakespeare and Spenser, this study shows the connection between visuality and ethical action in early modern English literature. The book places early modern debates about the value of visual experience into dialogue with subsequent philosophical and ethical efforts.

Throughout his plays, Shakespeare placed an extraordinary emphasis on the power of the face to reveal or conceal moral character and emotion, repeatedly inviting the audience to attend carefully to facial features and expressions. The essays collected here disclose that an attention to the power of the face in Shakespeare’s England helps explain moments when Shakespeare’s language of the self becomes intertwined with his language of the face. As the range of these essays demonstrates, an attention to Shakespeare’s treatment of faces has implications for our understanding of the historical and cultural context in which he wrote, as well as the significance of the face for the ongoing interpretation and production of the plays. Engaging with a variety of critical strands that have emerged from the so-called turn to the body, the contributors to this volume argue that Shakespeare’s invitation to look to the face for clues to inner character is not an invitation to seek a static text beneath an external image, but rather to experience the power of the face to initiate reflection, judgment, and action. The evidence of the plays suggests that Shakespeare understood that this experience was extremely complex and mysterious. By turning attention to the face, the collection offers important new analyses of a key feature of Shakespeare’s dramatic attention to the part of the body that garnered the most commentary in early modern England. By bringing together critics interested in material culture studies with those focused on philosophies of self and other and historians and theorists of performance, Shakespeare and the Power of the Face constitutes a significant contribution to our growing understanding of attitudes towards embodiment in Shakespeare’s England.

The times when abstaining from cakes and ale was seen as a sign of critical virtue are over. Phenomenal Shakespeare is at your back lawn with a picnic-basket jammed with intersubjectivity, embodiment, immediacy, representation. If you feel like passing, read this book.

Explores Shakespeare's representation of the failure of democracy in ancient Rome This book introduces Shakespeare as a historian of ancient Rome alongside figures such as Sallust, Cicero, St Augustine, Machiavelli, Gibbon, Hegel and Nietzsche. It considers Shakespeare's place in the history of concepts of selfhood and reflects on his sympathy for Christianity, in light of his reception of medieval Biblical drama, as well as his allusions to the New Testament. Shakespeare's critique of Romanitas anticipates concerns about secularisation, individualism and liberalism shared by philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel and Patrick Deneen.