Shakespeare'S Virtuous Theatre
Regular price
€112.99
Presents Shakespeare's theatre as a powerful forum for shaping our capacity for virtue
Opens virtue ethics to new political and ecological stakes by building bridges between ancient philosophy, contemporary virtue ethics and Shakespeare's drama
Demonstrates the semantic, pragmatic, and phenomenological range of virtue in Shakespeare's plays and dramatic practice by emphasizing the embodied, performative and deliberative dimensions of virtue
Offers new readings of virtues such as courage, friendship, constancy, kindness and judgment, as staged in Shakespeare's drama
This collection of essays explores how the Shakespearean drama enacts ancient virtues and conceptualises new ones in complex fictional scenarios that test virtues for their continuing value. Contributors approach the virtues as a source of imaginative, affective and intellectual nourishment and consider how Shakespeare's art increases our capacity for new pursuits of the good. Examining Shakespeare's virtuous theatre in tragic, comic and romance modes and from ethical, theatrical and political perspectives, this volume establishes virtue as a framework for a socially, environmentally and spiritually renewed literary criticism. Contributors balance historical depth and philosophical insight with the art of close reading as they contemplate the dynamic field of virtue embodied, responsive, energetic and dynamic as it ebbs and flows across time, among multiple wisdom traditions, and in the entangled lives and troubled circumstances of Shakespeare's characters.
Kent Lehnhof is professor of English at Chapman University. He is author of some two dozen articles on early modern literature and culture and is co-editor (along with Moshe Gold and Sandor Goodhart) of the essay collection Of Levinas and Shakespeare: To See Another Thus (2018). His articles have appeared in such journals as Shakespeare Quarterly, Renaissance Drama, English Literary Renaissance, ELH, SEL, Modern Philology, and Criticism. He is currently working on a book-length study of vocality and ethics in Shakespeare's late plays.Julia Reinhard Lupton is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author or co-author of five books on Shakespeare, including Shakespeare Dwelling: Designs for the Theater of Life (2018), Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life (2013), and Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology (2006). A former Guggenheim Fellow, she is the co-director of the New Swan Shakespeare Center at UC, Irvine.Carolyn Sale is associate professor of English at the University of Alberta. Her work has appeared in journals including ELH, Renaissance Drama, and Shakespeare Quarterly, as well as various essay collections including The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy (2018), The Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature, 1500 1700 (2017), Shakespeare and Judgment (2016), The History of British Women's Writing, Volume 1, 1500 1610 (2010), and The Law in Shakespeare (2007). She is completing the book manuscript 'The Literary Commons: The Common Law and the Writer in Early Modern England, 1528 1628'. Earlier work in the phenomenology of Shakespeare's theatre includes Eating Air, Feeling Smells: Hamlet's Theory of Performance, reprinted in Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations: Hamlet (2009).