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Can poetry articulate something about love that philosophy cannot?
The Form of Love argues that it can. In close readings of seven
"metaphysical" poems, the book shows how poets of the early modern
period and beyond use poetic form to turn philosophy to other ends,
in order not to represent the truth about love but to create a
virtual experience of love, in all its guises. The Form of Love
shows how verse creates love that can't exist without poetry's
specific affordances, and how poems can, in their impossibility,
prompt love's radical re-imagining. Like the philosophies on which
they draw, metaphysical poems imagine love as an intense form of
non-sovereignty, of giving up control. They even imagine love as a
liberating bondage-to a friend, a beloved, a saint, a God, or a
garden. Yet these poems create strange, striking versions of such
love, made in, rather than through, the devices, structures, and
forces where love appears. Tracing how poems think, Kuzner argues,
requires an intimate form of reading: close-even too
close-attention to and thinking with the text. Showing how poetry
thinks of love otherwise than other fields, the book reveals how
poetry and philosophy can nevertheless enter into a relation that
is itself like love.
Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years,
always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues,
protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to
simulate an invulnerable existence. James Kuzner's original new
study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell and Milton is the
first to present a genealogy for the modern self in which its
republican origins can be understood far more radically. In doing
so, the study is also the first to draw radical and republican
thought into sustained conversation, and to locate a republic for
which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to
offer as it is what community guards against. At a time when the
drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify
almost any state action, Open Subjects questions whether
vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be. Key
features: * First study to explore how early modern republican and
contemporary radical thought connect with and complement each other
* Traces the presence of English republicanism from the late
sixteenth century to the late seventeenth * Analyses Renaissance
literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and
contemporary political thought to add to how we think about
selfhood in the present * Offers illuminating new readings of the
place that English Renaissance figures occupy in histories of
friendship, the public sphere, and selfhood more generally
Can poetry articulate something about love that philosophy cannot?
The Form of Love argues that it can. In close readings of seven
"metaphysical" poems, the book shows how poets of the early modern
period and beyond use poetic form to turn philosophy to other ends,
in order not to represent the truth about love but to create a
virtual experience of love, in all its guises. The Form of Love
shows how verse creates love that can't exist without poetry's
specific affordances, and how poems can, in their impossibility,
prompt love's radical re-imagining. Like the philosophies on which
they draw, metaphysical poems imagine love as an intense form of
non-sovereignty, of giving up control. They even imagine love as a
liberating bondage-to a friend, a beloved, a saint, a God, or a
garden. Yet these poems create strange, striking versions of such
love, made in, rather than through, the devices, structures, and
forces where love appears. Tracing how poems think, Kuzner argues,
requires an intimate form of reading: close-even too
close-attention to and thinking with the text. Showing how poetry
thinks of love otherwise than other fields, the book reveals how
poetry and philosophy can nevertheless enter into a relation that
is itself like love.
Shakespeare as a Way of Life shows how reading Shakespeare helps us
to live with epistemological weakness and even to practice this
weakness, to make it a way of life. In a series of close readings,
Kuzner shows how Hamlet, Lucrece, Othello, The Winter's Tale, The
Tempest, and Timon of Athens, impel us to grapple with basic
uncertainties: how we can be free, whether the world is abundant,
whether we have met the demands of love and social life. To Kuzner,
Shakespeare's skepticism doesn't have the enabling potential of
Keats's heroic "negativity capability," but neither is that
skepticism the corrosive disease that necessarily issues in
tragedy. While sensitive to both possibilities, Kuzner offers a way
to keep negative capability negative while making skepticism
livable. Rather than light the way to empowered, liberal
subjectivity, Shakespeare's works demand lasting disorientation,
demand that we practice the impractical so as to reshape the frames
by which we view and negotiate the world. The act of reading
Shakespeare cannot yield the practical value that cognitive
scientists and literary critics attribute to it. His work neither
clarifies our sense of ourselves, of others, or of the world; nor
heartens us about the human capacity for insight and invention; nor
sharpens our ability to appreciate and adjudicate complex problems
of ethics and politics. Shakespeare's plays, rather, yield
cognitive discomforts, and it is just these discomforts that make
them worthwhile.
Shakespeare as a Way of Life shows how reading Shakespeare
helps us to live with epistemological weakness and even to practice
this weakness, to make it a way of life. In a series of close
readings, Kuzner shows how
Hamlet, Lucrece, Othello, The Winter’s
Tale, The Tempest, and Timon of Athens, impel us to
grapple with basic uncertainties: how we can be free, whether the
world is abundant, whether we have met the demands of love and
social life. To Kuzner, Shakespeare’s skepticism doesn’t have
the enabling potential of Keats’s heroic “negativity
capability,” but neither is that skepticism the corrosive disease
that necessarily issues in tragedy. While sensitive to both
possibilities, Kuzner offers a way to keep negative capability
negative while making skepticism livable. Rather than light the way
to empowered, liberal subjectivity, Shakespeare’s works demand
lasting disorientation, demand that we practice the impractical so
as to reshape the frames by which we view and negotiate the world.
The act of reading Shakespeare cannot yield the practical value
that cognitive scientists and literary critics attribute to it. His
work neither clarifies our sense of ourselves, of others, or of the
world; nor heartens us about the human capacity for insight and
invention; nor sharpens our ability to appreciate and adjudicate
complex problems of ethics and politics. Shakespeare’s plays,
rather, yield cognitive discomforts, and it is just these
discomforts that make them worthwhile.
This is the first exploration of how early modern republican and
contemporary radical thought connect with and complement each
other. Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent
years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues,
protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to
simulate an invulnerable existence. James Kuzner's original new
study of writings by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell and Milton is
the first to present a genealogy for the modern self in which its
republican origins can be understood far more radically. In doing
so, the study is also the first to draw radical and republican
thought into sustained conversation, and to locate a republic for
which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to
offer as it is what community guards against. At a time when the
drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify
almost any state action, "Open Subjects" questions whether
vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be. It traces
English republicanism from the late-16 century to the late-17th
century. It analyses Renaissance literary texts against classical,
early modern and contemporary political thought. It includes new
readings of English Renaissance figures in histories of friendship,
the public sphere and selfhood.
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