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Item Details
| Title:
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SHAKESPEAREAN FANTASY AND POLITICS
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| By: |
Thomas Betteridge |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| List price:
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£35.00 |
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We currently do not stock this item, please contact the publisher directly for
further information.
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| ISBN 10: |
1902806395 |
| ISBN 13: |
9781902806396 |
| Publisher: |
UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE PRESS |
| Pub. date: |
2 February, 2005 |
| Pages: |
224 |
| Description: |
This book draws extensively on the work of Slavojiek and other contemporary thinkers (including Adorno, Laclau and Copjec) to discover the truths of Shakespeare's drama and relate them to contemporary issues within the discipline of English literature. |
| Synopsis: |
Why read Shakespeare today? This book draws extensively on the work of Slavoj i ek and other contemporary thinkers (including Adorno, Laclau and Copjec) to discover the truths of Shakespeare's drama and relate them to contemporary issues within the discipline of English literature. New Historicism has been the dominant force in Shakespeare studies for the last twenty years, seeking to place Shakespeare's texts within their historical context and using traditional methods of textual analysis. Whilst this has produced some excellent work, it is clear that the New Historicist approach has largely failed to theorise its work. At the heart of the failure of New Historicism lies the problem of aesthetics, since without an engagement with the aesthetic it is not possible to properly address the most important questions that Shakespeare posed in his plays: ahistorical questions relating to the self, history, language and desire. Slavoj i ek's work represents an attempt to restore truth as a category to critical thought, and to this end he is committed to a materialist understanding of the work of Marx and Lacan as capable of producing truthful cultural analysis.Shakespeare shares i ek's concern with the production of truth. Shakespearean Fantasy and Politics posits that Shakespeare's early plays exhibit a confidence in the power of the theatre which slowly drains from his work until, in 'Othello', he seems disgusted with himself, his theatre and above all his audience. In his late Jacobean plays Shakespeare articulates a new theatrical ethics that answers the doubts so radically expressed in 'Othello'. From the first tetralogy - 'Henry VI' Pts 1, 2, 3, and 'Richard III' - through the late Elizabethan comedies and two of the explicitly political plays, 'Julius Caesar' and 'Coriolanus', Thomas Betteridge arrives at an analysis of 'Othello', the theoretical heart of the book. The final chapter looks at 'Cymbeline' and 'The Winter's Tale' and sees a resolution of the crisis. |
| Publication: |
UK |
| Imprint: |
Hertfordshire Publications |
| Returns: |
Non-returnable |
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