Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference - Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World (Hardcover)

Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference reveals the relationship between racial discrimination and the struggle for upward social mobility in the early modern world. Reading Shakespeare's plays alongside contemporaneous conduct literature - how-to books on self-improvement - this book demonstrates the ways that the pursuit of personal improvement was accomplished by the simultaneous stigmatization of particular kinds of difference. The widespread belief that one could better, or cultivate, oneself through proper conduct was coupled with an equally widespread belief that certain markers (including but not limited to "blackness"), indicated an inability to conduct oneself properly, laying the foundation for what we now call "racism." A careful reading of Shakespeare's plays reveals a recurring critique of the conduct system voiced, for example, by malcontents and social climbers like Iago and Caliban, and embodied in the struggles of earnest strivers like Othello, Bottom, Dromio of Ephesus, and Dromio of Syracuse, whose bodies are bruised, pinched, blackened, and otherwise indelibly marked as uncultivatable. By approaching race through the discourse of conduct, this volume not only exposes the epistemic violence toward stigmatized others that lies at the heart of self-cultivation, but also contributes to the broader definition of race that has emerged in recent studies of cross-cultural encounter, colonialism, and the global early modern world.

General

Imprint:	Crc Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Routledge Studies in Shakespeare
Release date:	2018
First published:	2018
Authors:	Patricia Akhimie
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	220
ISBN-13:	978-0-8153-5643-1
Categories:	Books > Arts & Architecture > The arts: general issues > General Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary theory Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Theatre, drama > General Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 16th to 18th centuries Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Drama texts, plays > 16th to 18th centuries > Shakespeare plays, texts
LSN:	0-8153-5643-9
Barcode:	9780815356431

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