Theatre has a remarkable capacity: it touches from a distance. The
audience is affected, despite their physical separation from the
stage. The spectators are moved, even though the fictional world
presented to them will never come into direct touch with their real
lives. Shakespeare is clearly one of the master practitioners of
theatrical touch. As the study shows, his exceptional dramaturgic
talent is intrinsically connected with being one of the great
thinkers of touch. His plays fathom the complexity and power of a
fascinating notion - touch as a productive proximity that is
characterised by unbridgeable distance - which philosophers like
Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Luce
Irigaray and Jean-Luc Nancy have written about, centuries later. By
playing with touch and its metatheatrical implications, Shakespeare
raises questions that make his theatrical art point towards
modernity: how are communities to form when traditional
institutions begin to crumble? What happens to selfhood when time
speeds up, when oneness and timeless truth can no longer serve as
reliable foundations? What is the role and the capacity of language
in a world that has lost its seemingly unshakeable belief and trust
in meaning? How are we to conceive of the unthinkable extremes of
human existence - birth and death - when the religious orthodoxy
slowly ceases to give satisfactory explanations? Shakespeare's
theatre not only prompts these questions, but provides us with
answers. They are all related to touch, and they are all theatrical
at their core: they are argued and performed by the striking
experience of theatre's capacities to touch - at a distance.
General
Imprint: |
Edinburgh University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Series: |
Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy |
Release date: |
February 2023 |
Authors: |
Johannes Ungelenk
|
Dimensions: |
234 x 156mm (L x W) |
Format: |
Hardcover - Sewn / Cloth over boards
|
Pages: |
288 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-4744-9782-4 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
1-4744-9782-9 |
Barcode: |
9781474497824 |
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