Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Plays & playwrights > 16th to 18th centuries > Shakespeare studies & criticism
|
Buy Now
Shakespeare's Folly - Philosophy, Humanism, Critical Theory (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,212
Discovery Miles 12 120
|
|
Shakespeare's Folly - Philosophy, Humanism, Critical Theory (Paperback)
Series: Routledge Studies in Shakespeare
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
|
This study contends that folly is of fundamental importance to the
implicit philosophical vision of Shakespeare's drama. The discourse
of folly's wordplay, jubilant ironies, and vertiginous paradoxes
furnish Shakespeare with a way of understanding that lays bare the
hypocrisies and absurdities of the serious world. Like Erasmus,
More, and Montaigne before him, Shakespeare employs folly as a mode
of understanding that does not arrogantly insist upon the veracity
of its own claims - a fool's truth, after all, is spoken by a fool.
Yet, as this study demonstrates, Shakespearean folly is not the
sole preserve of professional jesters and garrulous clowns, for it
is also apparent on a thematic, conceptual, and formal level in
virtually all of his plays. Examining canonical histories,
comedies, and tragedies, this study is the first to either
contextualize Shakespearean folly within European humanist thought,
or to argue that Shakespeare's philosophy of folly is part of a
subterranean strand of Western philosophy, which itself reflects
upon the folly of the wise. This strand runs from the
philosopher-fool Socrates through to Montaigne and on to Nietzsche,
but finds its most sustained expression in the Critical Theory of
the mid to late twentieth-century, when the self-destructive
potential latent in rationality became an historical reality. This
book makes a substantial contribution to the fields of Shakespeare,
Renaissance humanism, Critical Theory, and Literature and
Philosophy. It illustrates, moreover, how rediscovering the
philosophical potential of folly may enable us to resist the
growing dominance of instrumental thought in the cultural sphere.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.